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That our Lord Jesus Christ is truly Man is not now disputed by anyone. There are many who deny that He is God, none who deny that He is Man.
But in ancient times the denial of our Lord,s Manhood was one of the commonest and most widespread heresies. Already St. John had to resist it (I St. John 4:2). St. Ignatius a few years later was continually denouncing it.
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This heresy usually took the form of Docetism (*`60F4H, appearance). The Docetists held that the body of our Lord was a sort of phantom, that He did not really eat or drink, or die, but only appeared to do so. Their reason for this was their assumption that matter is evil, and that therefore God could not have really taken human flesh. So long did this notion last, extraordinary as it appears to us, that traces of it are found in the teaching of Muhammad. According to the Koran, Issa bin Mariam (Jesus the Son of Mary), the last great prophet before Muhammad himself, did not die on the Cross but was translated to heaven; it was Simon of Cyrene who took His place, died on the Cross, and was mistaken for Him by the writers of the Gospels!
Another form of the denial of our Lord,s real Manhood was Iconoclasm, the refusal to permit pictures of our Lord as Man.
a) The Use of Sacred Pictures The use and veneration of sacred pictures, "the books of the unlearned" as they have been called, grew up very gradually in the Church, and does not appear to have made any great progress until heathenism had ceased to be a danger. About 306, the Council of Elvira in Spain had forbidden pictures to be painted on the walls of churches. But at least by the end of the fourth century the use of pictures in churches was general, and by the eighth century there was a good deal of superstition connected with them.1
b) Leo the Isaurian Forbids it Leo III, the Isaurian, who became Emperor in 717, came from the eastern frontier where Monophysite, and perhaps even Moslem, ideas had influence: the Monophysites, since they did not sufficiently emphasize our Lord,s Manhood, forbade the use of pictures,2 and Muhammad, as is well known, prohibited the making of a picture of anything for any purpose, so that Islamic art is confined to geometrical figures. At any rate, Leo III determined to put down the use of sacred pictures.
He had the support of the army, which was ardently on his side,
1 For instance, the practice of making a picture godparent to a child.
2 The Coptic Church has now no objection to sacred pictures in churches.
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and of many of the leading bishops because they were jealous of the growing power of the monasteries which were the centers of the cult of the sacred pictures, and because the Church was now so closely connected with the State that they had worldly reasons for supporting the Government. He was opposed by the monks, especially by the convent of the "Sleepless Ones" at Constantinople; by the women who were devoted to the sacred pictures; by the see of Rome; and by St. John of Damascus, the greatest theologian of the age, who was a subject of the Arab Khalif and was therefore able to speak and write without fear of the Emperor.
c) St. John of Damascus St. John of Damascus held that the Iconoclasts regarded our Lord not as a Person but only as an idea, and that the use of pictures was a necessary result of the Incarnation and the belief in our Lord,s real manhood. To the argument that the Second Commandment forbade the veneration of pictures, he replied that that commandment was changed by the Incarnation, for at the time when it was issued God had not yet taken human nature; and further, that the respect and veneration paid to the sacred pictures (*@L8,\", dulia) were to be distinguished from the adoration due to God alone (8"JD,\", latria), which, if given to any created being, would indeed be idolatry (,Æ*T8@8"JD,\", latria given to idols or visible forms). St. John of Damascus also maintained that sacred pictures, like sacraments, were channels of Divine grace, that their use was necessary for those who could not read but must learn through pictures, and that doctrinal questions, such as this was, must be settled by synods of bishops, not by emperors.
d) Constantine V and the Iconoclastic Council of Hieria In 731 Pope Gregory III held a council of ninety-three bishops at Rome, which condemned Iconoclasm; and Leo III could not enforce his will on the Latins. In 754 his son, Constantine V (Copronymus), held a council of 340 bishops at Hieria near Constantinople. It represented that patriarchate only, for the others refused to send any bishops. This council declared all pictures of Christ and the saints forbidden by the Second Commandment, and ordered them to be removed from the churches which were to be decorated with pictures of birds, flowers, and fruit. It also tried to destroy monasticism, forbade the use of the monk,s habit, and turned the monasteries into barracks.
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e) The Second Council of Nicea In 780 Constantine VI became Emperor. He was only ten years old, and his mother Irene ruled the empire. She determined to restore the sacred pictures, and summoned the Second Council of Nicea in 787. This council is reckoned by both Greeks and Latins as the Seventh Ecumenical Council. Three hundred and fifty bishops took part in it, all of whom, except the Roman legates, were Greeks. It condemned the iconoclastic council of Hieria, restored the pictures to the churches, directed that dulia but not latria was to be paid to them, and declared that the right to decide questions of doctrine belonged to the bishops, not to the Emperor. There was another iconoclastic period after this, in which the leader on the orthodox side was St. Theodore of the Studium, but the sacred pictures were finally restored in 843.
The sanction given by the Second Council of Nicea to sacred pictures includes, in principle, sculpture also (though in practice the Greeks have never allowed statues). It is the charter of Christian art. If the Iconoclasts had been successful, the masterpieces of Raphael and Michelangelo would have been impossible.
f) The Council of Frankfort The churches north of the Alps were not represented at Nicea. In 792 the English bishops, on receiving a copy of the decrees of Nicea from Charles the Great, replied that they rejected these decrees. In 794 Charles the Great summoned the Council of Frankfort, at which 300 bishops from all parts of his dominions were present, and which declared that sacred pictures were to be used but not worshiped, rejecting the Second Council of Nicea as a "pseudo-synod".
Nevertheless, the veneration of sacred pictures spread rapidly in the West. Sculptured images, which have never been in use in the Greek churches, soon became common among the Latins. The exact authority given to the Second Council of Nicea by Latin Christendom in the following centuries is not quite clear. The legates of Pope Hadrian I had taken a leading part in it. The creed of Pope Leo IX recognized it as the Seventh Ecumenical Council. It was included in the well-known handbook of Canon Law, the Decretum of Gratian, which was everywhere accepted as a textbook. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that homage directed to an image is intended not for the image but for the person whom the image represents. If the image represents Christ, the worship offered is
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latria. The Greeks, on the other hand, distinguished the "relative homage" offered to the image from the homage offered to the person whom it represents: dulia, not latria, is offered to images even of Christ. St. Theodore of the Studium taught that we must not offer latria even to Christ as Man but only the Holy Trinity.
The Second Council of Nicea appears to have been regarded as "General" by the Council of Constance, but even as late as 1540 there were theologians, especially in France, who rejected its authority. However, it was formally accepted by the Council of Trent and by the Roman Communion since Trent.
It cannot be said that the Church of England, which rejects both Constance and Trent, has ever formally accepted it. Both before and since the Reformation, the formal teaching of the English Church has been that of Frankfort, that sacred pictures and images are to be used but not venerated. Some of our divines under Calvinist influence have favored Iconoclasm (see the Homily on Peril of Idolatry), and the lamentable destruction of sacred pictures and images during the Reformation is well known. The Anglican Communion today is officially free from the iconoclastic heresy, though there are many individuals infected with it, especially among the laity. But it is by no means certain that it would accept the Second Council of Nicea, which condemned those who should refuse to accept "all ecclesiastical tradition, whether written or non-written". This canon would require very careful explanation, and would not be accepted unless it could be shown to be consistent with the principle of Articles 6 and 20. And while the condemnation of Iconoclasm seems to be a necessary conclusion from belief in the Incarnation, it would not be easy to show that the veneration of pictures, as distinct from their use for ornament and instruction, is found in or can be proved by Holy Scripture. On the other hand, it is certain that reunion with the Orthodox Eastern Communion cannot be accomplished without formal acceptance of the Seven Ecumenical Councils; and the question is, whether the decrees of the Second Council of Nicea can be explained in a manner which is consistent with Anglican principles. The Anglican Communion has always accepted the first six Councils (see p. 86, note).
There was in the early Middle Ages a tendency to regard our Lord chiefly as the Divine Judge, which may have been due to the influence of the Monophysite writer, Pseudo-Dionysius (see p. 87). From
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this arose the popular notion that as a medieval king could be best approached by means of powerful courtiers, our Lord could best be approached by means of the saints. This notion is not consistent with the New Testament or theologically tolerable; our Lord is not that kind of King. But it has its influence even today in some parts of Christendom.
On the other hand, there has been for many years a strong tendency in the other direction. Our Lord is regarded first of all as Man, the best and noblest of men. His Godhead, if accepted at all, is thrust into the background. A well-known Congregationalist minister once wrote a book called Jesus, Lord or Leader, asserting that Jesus Christ is our Leader to be followed, but not our Lord to be worshiped. This is the doctrine, which has now become traditional, of theological Liberalism in general. In recent years it has lost much ground, but it is still widely held, especially by the generation now passing. We cannot assert too often or too strongly that those who deny that Jesus is God, in the sense in which the Church teaches that He is God, have no right to the name of Christian.
It is easy to show that the Gospels teach that our Lord Jesus Christ is truly Man. The latest of them, the Fourth Gospel, which teaches His Godhead more explicitly than the others, also lays special emphasis on His Manhood, probably because one of its objects was to resist the new doctrine that Jesus Christ was not come in the flesh (I St. John 4:2), that He was not really Man.
The Son of God was born exactly like every other baby (though, as His Mother was a virgin, He was not conceived like every other baby). St. Matthew and St. Luke are our authorities for this, and St. John tells us that "the Word became flesh" (1:14). St. Luke tells us that He increased in wisdom and stature (2:52) that is, that His mind and body developed like those of other boys. He was hungry (St. Matt. 4:2; St. Luke 4:2), thirsty (St. John 19:28), weary (St. John 4:5). He wept (St. John 11:35). His sufferings in Gethsemane, during His trial, and on the Cross, were real. That he really died is shown by St. John 19:34 as well as by the story of His burial told by all the Evangelists. He ate and drank even after His Resurrection (St. Luke 24:41; St. John 21:15; Acts 10:41).
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This shows that He is still Man, and that He did not lay down His Manhood. It is Man that is seated on the throne of God. We shall see later on the importance of this.
Since our Lord was truly Man, He had a human mind, the powers of which were limited. He was omniscient, all-knowing, as God but not as Man. "He increased in wisdom" (St. Luke 2:52). He had to learn to read like other boys. He said Himself that He did not know the date of the Day of Judgment (St. Mark 13:32).
If He was to live among men at all, His mind had to be that of a man, and of a man of His time. If, for instance, He had known all that we know about the laws of health, He would have had to teach it to His neighbors (for to know it and not to teach it would have been inconsistent with His character); and He would not have had time to do the work for which He had come into the world. We need not, then, find any difficulty in believing that His knowledge of the authorship of the books of the Old Testament was that of His time, or that He attributed to David a psalm which modern scholars agree was most probably not written by David (though the argument which He used may imply "as you say"; "if David, as you say, called Him Lord, how is He his son?" : St. Mark 12:35).
But on all matters that concerned His mission we believe that He could not be mistaken. He spoke of these things as a prophet with Divine authority (St. Matt. 7:29). He claimed that His teaching superseded the Law (St. Matt. 5:38, etc.). We are not to doubt that His teaching on marriage, or the resurrection of the dead, or the existence and power of the devil, is Divine and infallible. On these subjects He knew it, most probably, not with the Divine omniscience, but with the extended human knowledge with which He was filled for the purpose of His work.
The traditional opinion, which appears to go back to St. Cyril of Alexandria, is that during His ministry He sometimes spoke as God, and sometimes as Man; as God, when He said "Before Abraham was, I am"; as Man when He said "I thirst". Most modern theologians are dissatisfied with this theory; and it is certainly not of faith. The relation of His Divine consciousness to His human consciousness is a mystery which we cannot hope fully to understand. But it is easier to believe that when He spoke on earth, He spoke as
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Man with human knowledge, even when He spoke of His own Godhead ("before Abraham was, I am": St. John 8:58).
Some theologians, however, have gone further than this and put forward the theory known as the Kenosis (6X<TF4H, emptying), which began in Lutheran circles and is due to the assumption of Luther. According to this theory, God the Son, when He became Man, "emptied" Himself of His Godhead or of some of its attributes such as omnipotence and omniscience. Luther,s view of the Incarnation was not, as the Council of Chalcedon taught, that the eternal Word was the self of the two natures which remain distinct from one another, but that the two natures coalesced into one indivisible personality. Though he accepted the definition of Chalcedon formally, his teaching was really inconsistent with it. The Lutherans believed that the Divine attributes were communicated to the human nature; and when they came in the eighteenth century to see that the limitations of Christ,s human nature were real, they denied that He could have still possessed, as Man, the attributes of God. Some went so far as to say that His Godhead was changed into a human soul. Others distinguished between the "absolute" and the "relative" attributes of God, and held that the "relative" attributes, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, were abandoned by the Son when He became Man.
The theory is based on a single passage of the New Testament, Phil. 2:5-8: "Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross."
I cannot accept this theory for two reasons. First, its scriptural basis is insufficient. We are warned not to base any doctrine on a single text without support from other passages; still more without reference to the context. In this passage St. Paul is exhorting his readers to copy the humility of our Lord. It is an ethical, not a doctrinal, passage. He is unlikely to have introduced into such an exhortation, in a relative clause, a difficult theological proposition which he does not explain, and which has no parallel in any of his other surviving letters. It is more likely that St. Paul is speaking rhetorically
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(for the whole passage is highly rhetorical), and uses the word "emptied" to mean that our Lord, out of profound humility, laid no claim to the glory of being the Son of God, but submitted to the inglorious conditions of human life and death. If St. Paul had meant that He really emptied Himself of the properties of the Godhead, surely he would have expressed so startling an idea in clearer language than this.1
Second, God, who is "without variation, or shadow that is cast by turning" (St. James 1:17), cannot abandon His omniscience even for a moment, for to do so would be to change, and He does not change.
We must believe, then, that our Lord was at once omniscient as God, and ignorant as man. How could this be? We cannot say. It is part of the mystery of the Incarnation. But we may catch a glimpse of how it could be if we think of a missionary who is a first-rate theologian, philosopher, and mathematician, going to preach the Gospel to a very primitive tribe of savages unable, let us say, to count more than ten. The missionary learns their language. He tries to think as they do, and to place his mind at their level. He still knows his Plato and his Aquinas, but when he speaks in the language of the tribe, he thinks, as far as he can, as a member of the tribe would think apart from the message which he has come to bring them. He cannot think as a member of the tribe about this because it is to teach them this that he is there at all. But even this must be preached in words that they can understand with the crude background that their minds provide. Of course it cannot be a complete parallel. Our Lord has two natures, one of which is infinite, and the missionary has only one. But to believe that our Lord is truly God and truly Man seems to imply belief that He was on earth both omniscient and ignorant. There is no need to speculate about the limits of His human nature now, though of course He is still Man.
He is not merely "a man", but "Man". He is the "Last Adam" (I Cor. 15:45), and is therefore, in a sense, the summing up of all humanity, as St. Irenaeus says. Thus it is certain that our Lord
1
See F. J. Hall, The Incarnation, pp. 228-236.
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was a Jew (the theories of some Germans that He was of Aryan descent are supported by no evidence at all). But it is equally certain that every race regards Him as its own. He is an Englishman to the English, a Negro to the Negroes. He transcends all racial distinctions, and even the distinction between male and female. He includes within Himself all that is human. He is the head of the human race, and in a real sense He is the human race.
The doctrine of the Incarnation as defined by the Council of Chalcedon differs widely at first sight from the plain teaching of the New Testament.
But closer examination shows that it is the teaching of the New Testament put into technical language. Everyone who accepts the teaching of the New Testament that Jesus Christ is both God and Man must accept the teaching of Chalcedon that He is one Person in two Natures, for every other possible interpretation has been tried and found wanting.
The great virtue of the definition of Chalcedon is that it is balanced. It combines different aspects of the truth. It rejects Nestorianism on one side, and Eutychianism on the other. It asserts both the complete Godhead and the complete Manhood of our Lord. It is the classical example of the Via Media, the middle way which combines both extremes.
It has been accused by some modern writers of being insufficiently definite. But this is one of its chief merits. The Incarnation is a mystery. We can never expect to understand it fully. The purpose
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of the Chalcedonian Definition is negative rather than positive. It warns Christians that one particular line of thought is false because one-sided. It protects us from error rather than guides us to truth. The way is left free for further speculation, as long as it does not fall into the errors which the Chalcedonian Definition shuts out.
The decrees of Chalcedon have been accepted by all Christendom, with the exceptions to be mentioned later. Since Pope Leo had so much to do with the decision of the Council, the see of Rome became its leading champion, breaking the old alliance with Alexandria. With Rome went the whole West; and when Constantinople returned to Chalcedonian orthodoxy under the Emperor Justin, the Greek churches returned also. The Patriarchate of the East beyond the Euphrates freely accepted Chalcedon. In modern times the Continental Reformers declared their loyalty to Chalcedonian Christology, and it is formally recognized by the Confession of Augsburg and therefore by all orthodox Lutherans (for their standard is the Confession of Augsburg, not the private opinions of Luther). Calvin accepted Chalcedon, but most Calvinists have refused to be bound by the dogmas of their master, whether true or false; and the sects of the Reformation cannot bind themselves by this or any other dogma because they maintain the inalienable right of the individual Christian to interpret the Bible for himself. But every part of Christendom that has any claim to share in the inheritance of the ancient Church accepts the definition of Chalcedon, except the "Monophysite" communion consisting of the Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, and Jacobite or "Syrian Orthodox" Churches.
Whether these churches, though they will not accept Chalcedon, really deny the truth which the Council guards is very doubtful. They all condemn the teaching of Eutyches, and some authorities maintain that Severus of Antioch, their leading theologian, differed only verbally from his orthodox opponents. The Council of Chalcedon, by condemning and deposing Dioscorus of Alexandria, aroused against itself the fanatical nationalism of the Egyptians and Syrians which, as we have seen, would not yield an inch to the hated "Melkites" or Imperialists, the supporters of the Emperor,s Council. The Monophysite party became a group, first of independent churches and then of independent nations. The Moslem conquest two centuries after Chalcedon preserved the existing state of things as a
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glacier preserves whatever falls into it. Orthodox and Monophysite remain to this day as they were in the seventh century. Any agreement now would be regarded as treason to the tradition of their fathers, strengthened by thirteen centuries of Moslem oppression.
So the refusal of the Monophysite churches to submit to the definition of Chalcedon is not a genuine exception.
We may contrast the definition of Chalcedon with three later developments which have not received the same universal acceptance.
1) The Decrees of Trent and the Vatican The later Latin Councils, especially those of Trent and the Vatican, have imposed a large number of new dogmas, not only because they were needed to exclude doctrine which the Council held to be false, but also because the Roman see was determined to increase its own authority by means of them. These dogmas are not based on Holy Scripture from which it is impossible to prove the supremacy by Divine right, infallibility, and the universal ordinary jurisdiction of the Pope, transubstantiation, purgatory, indulgences, the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin, etc. Nor are they accepted by any Christian church outside the Roman Communion. For these reasons the Eastern and Anglican churches accept Chalcedon but reject the Councils of Trent and the Vatican.
2) "Simple Bible Teaching" Many modern Christians reject all the decrees of all the Councils, declaring that the Bible by itself is enough. But all the ancient heretics accepted the authority of the Bible. Arius and Apollinarius, Nestorius and Eutyches, all claimed that their teaching was based on the Bible. Besides, the notion that the Bible is perfectly clear and intelligible is vary naïve. "Simple Bible teaching" means in practice the Bible interpreted in accordance with the tradition in which the teacher has been brought up, commonly a tradition going back to the Continental Reformers. The chaos of sects in the United States shows how insufficient the Bible by itself is to protect the ignorant from false doctrine.
3) "Liberal" Demand for the Revision of the Creeds Modern liberal theologians have often demanded a change in the dogmatic decrees of the Councils. The time may come when it will
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be desirable or even necessary to interpret those decrees by a definition in more modern language. But this cannot be done while Christendom is divided as it is at present, nor is there any real reason for attempting to do it. Those who say they want the language modernized really want to alter the contents of the definitions. They are precisely the persons from whom those definitions are intended to protect the simple.
The historic doctrine of the Church and Sacraments (which was rejected partly by Luther and entirely by Calvin) rests upon the doctrine of the Incarnation. There are Christians who have attempted in modern times to lay great emphasis on the doctrine of the Church and the Sacraments without any clear belief on the doctrine of the Incarnation which underlies them. This is like expecting cut flowers to grow in the ground. The Church is the Body and the Bride of the Incarnate Word of God. Those who reject either the Godhead or the Manhood of Jesus Christ believe the Church to be a merely human society, and the Sacraments mere magical rites without authority or efficacy.
But the doctrine of the Incarnation is the basis not only of the life of the Church but also of the life of civilized Europe. Modern "liberal" civilization is founded upon the doctrine that all human beings living in a country have equal civil rights, and that all nations, large and small, and peoples living in tribal or even savage conditions have equal rights to freedom and self-development. These doctrines are not put into practice universally even by the most civilized nations, but they have been for some generations regarded as ideals by most European States. They rest ultimately on the belief that the Word of God took human nature and died for all men, and therefore that every human being is of infinite value. Where the Christian faith is rejected, liberal civilization is sooner or later rejected too.
The ancient Romans did not believe that all men, whether citizens or not, should have equal civil rights, or that Jews or other barbarians had the same right to their own life as Romans. Moslems do not believe that non-Moslems are entitled to civil equality with themselves. Communists do not believe that the capitalists have as much right to equal justice as the proletariat. German National Socialists
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did not believe that the Jew had equal rights with the German. Fascists did not believe that Ethiopia had the same right to self-development as Italy.
Liberal civilization is very imperfect, but it has no meaning and no possible future apart from the Incarnation. The dogmas of Chalcedon are necessary if the Incarnation is to be rightly understood. As G. K. Chesterton said, "a slip in the definitions might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs".1 The dogmas of Chalcedon are the basis of modern civilization.
The consequence of accepting the teaching of Chalcedon, that our Lord Jesus Christ is both God and Man, is that we secure the true belief about the nature of God and about the nature of man.
1. Known through the Gospels We see in Jesus Christ displayed to us in the four Gospels God Himself. It is not only through the Gospels (as some think) that we can gain true knowledge of God, for the revelation of God to the prophets and other writers of the Old Testament was true though partial. But Jesus Christ is the "express image" of the Father, and by studying His life we can know the character of God more perfectly than in any other way.
2. Personal God From Him we see that God is personal, not merely an idea or an influence. God made us in His image. We did not make Him in ours. He is not merely a name for our highest ideals.
3. God of Order and Justice The God whom we see in Jesus Christ is the God of order and of justice. It is not for us to sit in judgment on Him. It is He who will judge us who is indeed judging us continually.
4. God of Love But He is not only our Judge (as Christians have in some ages been tempted to regard Him), but also our Brother. His love is shown by His death for us. It was a new conception of God that Jesus Christ brought into the world when He showed that God loves us so much that He was willing to suffer all the humiliation of human life and all the pain of death on the Cross to save us from ourselves.
1
Orthodoxy, p.183.
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5. God our Leader And therefore God is no longer a Being far away in the heavens, nor a World-Soul without any particular relation to anyone. He is our Leader and our Savior who calls us to live and die with Him, for Him, and in His power. For He is not only God but Man, and knows by His own experience what it is to be Man.
As God is revealed to us in Christ, so man also is revealed to us in Christ. It is remarkable that those who do not believe in God, as Christians believe in Him, do not believe in the dignity of man either. According to Buddhism man is a miserable being destined for innumerable reincarnations to end at last in nothingness. According to the tradition of Islam he is the slave of a capricious God. According to Marxian Communism [he is] a piece of material doomed to serve the ends of economic destiny. According to National Socialism [he is] the instrument of the omnipotent State and cannon fodder for its Leader. But Christians believe that man is created in the image of God, by which we mean that he is given free will to control, within limits, his own destiny; that he is redeemed by the death and resurrection of God the Son; that if he accepts the destiny for which God has made him, he is being prepared by the Holy Spirit for personal union with God. Therefore he is of infinite value, but only because God the Son has become and is Man.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is man as God made him, man as he would have been but for the Fall. Man is what he is because he is fallen. He is not what God meant him to be; but the life of Jesus Christ on earth shows what he might have been and what by the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ he may still be.
Moreover, our Lord is the Second Adam, the Head and Representative of the human race. He is not only a man, He is Man. Every other human leader belongs to some particular race; the Buddha was an Indian, Plato a Greek, Mohammed an Arab, Luther a German; but our Lord Jesus Christ, though born a Jew, belongs equally to all races. The English are inclined to think of Him as English, the Chinese as Chinese, the Africans as African.
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He is our supreme example. We are to be like Him, and that ideal fully satisfies our consciences. But He is not a mere teacher. His teaching cannot be separated from His claims, and we cannot follow it without His continual help. He did not come only to show us the way, as the Buddha claimed to do, or to proclaim the truth, as Mohammed claimed to do, but to be Himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We cannot tread the Way or accept the Truth without sharing the Life which is imparted to us in the Church.
Our Lord came first of all as a Savior. Those who represent Him as first of all a Teacher misrepresent Him completely, do not even begin to understand what His religion is, and cannot accept His teaching which is inseparable from His claim to be the Incarnate Son of God and from His work of redemption. Yet His teaching is unique, for it is the basis of the Christian moral ideal which is different from all other moral ideals. The strange notion is still sometimes met with that the moral ideals of all men are the same, whatever their religion may be. In reality men differ at least as widely in their moral ideals as they do in their religious dogmas. The ideal of Aristotle was the :,("8`RLP@H, the "magnificent" man, who is great and knows himself to be so almost the perfect prig. The ideal of the Stoics was the man who had taught himself to feel no emotion about anything. The Buddhist ideal is the monk who has wholly freed himself from desire and from his relation to the world in which he lives. The Moslem ideal is the pious Arab warrior, completely submissive to the will of God but intensely proud of his own position as one of God,s chosen. (The ideal of Cromwell,s Ironsides was probably not very different.)
The Christian ideal as described in the Gospels and as displayed in the immense variety of Christian saints is unmistakably different from all these. It differs from all of them in this: that no one can make any progress towards it in his own strength. It is impossible to follow Christ as our Teacher without accepting Him as our Savior.
But the death of Jesus Christ would not have saved us if He had not been both God and Man. A created being, however exalted, could not have redeemed mankind. It was for this reason that St.
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Athanasius spent his life in battle against the false teaching of Arius. Nor could He have saved us if He had not been truly and fully human. God has shared our sufferings. God loves us so much that He died to save us. That is the good news, the Gospel. It is not true unless He is both God and Man.
And the brotherhood of men depends entirely on the Incarnation. Because God has taken human nature, every one who shares that human nature is His brother, and the brother of His disciples. If this were not true, there would be no reason for men to regard one another as brothers. In practice, they don,t.
Finally, the Incarnation of the Son of God is unique. Once and only once in time, God took human nature of the Blessed Virgin. He never did it before. He will never do it again. The Incarnation is not merely the highest example of the immanence of God in man. Jesus Christ is not merely one of the class of prophets and teachers. Plato and the Buddha and Confucius, and the other teachers of mankind were only men. Jesus Christ is not only Man but God. "I tell you what it is," said Charles Lamb: "if Shakespeare came into the room, we should all stand up; but if Jesus Christ came into the room, we should all kneel down."
The Incarnation, rightly understood, with all that follows from it, is the key to all the problems of mankind. Every political, social, and economic problem could be solved if the Incarnation were taken quite seriously by every one as the basis of his conduct, public and private. In the words of Browning:
"I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ,
Accepted by the reason, solves for thee
All questions, in the earth and out of it."1
The Incarnation of the Son of God was a miracle that is, it was not part of the regular course of nature. Its cause did not lie within the ordinary sequence of events. It was accompanied by events, such as His resurrection, which do not happen in the ordinary course of history.
1
"A Death in the Desert."
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Therefore the Christian religion, the center of which is the Incarnate Son of God, contains the miraculous element. Christianity without miracle is not Christianity. No one who thinks that "miracles do not happen" can be a Christian.
We have all been taught to believe in the uniformity of nature. If nature were not uniform, if we could never be sure that the sun would not rise in the west or that a hen,s egg would not produce a crocodile, natural science and indeed human life would be impossible. But the uniformity of nature cannot be proved. It is a dogma or axiom of natural science, but only the theologian and the philosopher can give a reason for it.
The best philosophers have taught what the prophets of Israel also proclaimed that God is orderly. Nature is uniform because God wills it to be so. God is not capricious, He does nothing without reason, and He does not change: "with Him is no variation, neither shadow cast by turning" (James 1:17). But He is not bound to act always in the same way if He has good reason to act otherwise. We believe that the Incarnation, at any rate, is such a reason.
There are people who say that "they feel it to be more congruous with the wisdom and majesty of God that the regularities, such as men of science observe in nature and call laws of nature, should serve His purpose without any need for exceptions on the physical plane" (Doctrine in the Church of England, p.51). This is only another form of the argument which led our medieval forefathers into so many errors, "It must be so, therefore it is so." If the evidence shows as we believe it does that God does at times work by "exceptions", it is not scientific, still less pious, to prefer "what I feel" to the evidence. And to set up, as an object of worship, a conception or mental image of God differing from what God has revealed about Himself is a form of idolatry. It may be said that if all that God has made is good, the ordinary course of nature cannot be improved and requires no miracles. But, unhappily, though God made all things good, all things did not remain good. Man is fallen. It may be that no miracles would have been needed if man had never fallen, but that miracles are needed if he is to be saved from the
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result of his own folly and restored to the condition for which God meant him.
The two best-known definitions of miracles are that of St. Thomas Aquinas who believed in miracles, and that of John Stuart Mill who did not.
St. Thomas,s definition of a miracle is this: Miraculum est praeter ordinem totius naturae creatae : Deus igitur cum solus sit non creatura, solus etiam virtute propriâ miracula facere potest. (A miracle is something beyond the order of created nature. Therefore since God alone is not a created being, He also is the only One who can work miracles by His own power.)
The word "nature" can be used in three different senses: (a) It may mean "all that exists". Spinoza, the Jewish philosopher who was a pantheist, uses it in this sense. Nothing can be "beyond nature" if this is what we mean by nature. (b) It may mean "all created things". St. Thomas Aquinas uses it in this sense, for he is careful to say "created nature". (c) It may mean "all material things", as when we say "natural science". This is the usual modern sense.
St. Thomas says "praeter" (beyond), not "contra" (against). The order of creation is due to the will of God. A miracle is not contrary to the will of God, but it is a special extraordinary exercise of the will of God.
Nothing can be outside nature if by nature we mean "all that exists".
God is outside nature if by nature we mean "all created things".
The will of God or even, within limits, the will of man may interfere with the ordinary course of nature if by "nature" we mean "all material things".
John Stuart Mill,s definition of a miracle is: "A phenomenon not preceded by any antecedent phenomenal conditions sufficient again to reproduce it."
This definition implies that there is nothing but the material world in existence. It takes no account of the human will, still less of the will of God. A chemical experiment can always be reproduced,
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given the conditions in which it was produced once. But historical events in which the human will takes part are never reproduced. "History does not repeat itself." An event like the French Revolution will not occur again in exactly the same way.
But if, as we believe, all causes are personal, if whatever is not caused by human (or angelic) wills is caused by the will of God, there is no difficulty in believing that miracles are possible. Man cannot perform miracles because he is himself part of the material world. But God is outside the material world, and its "laws" which are only observed regularities were made by Him and can be changed by Him.
A man of orderly habits has his daily program. He gets up at a fixed hour, has his meals at fixed hours, and so on. But if he wants, for instance, to catch an early train, he may decide to make an exception, and to get up an hour earlier than usual. He is not bound to observe his own rules, but he will not break them without a reason and a sufficient reason.
The course of nature is God,s daily program. He is not bound by it, but He does not change it without a sufficient reason. We believe that the Incarnation was an event so important as to justify exceptions to the course of nature.
The real difficulty of believing in the possibility of miracles is want of belief in the living God. In the ordinary affairs of life men take for granted that the universe is "closed" and that nothing out of the course of nature happens. They do not realize that this is due to the will and to the orderly character of God. As it is difficult to profess adherence to Christian morals on Sunday if one works by a non-Christian moral standard on weekdays, so it is difficult to think of God as living, active, capable of changing the course of nature if one assumes for practical purposes that the course of nature cannot be changed. It is notoriously harder for the townsman in an office to believe in God than for the sailor or the desert nomad who is in constant contact with the forces of nature.
Therefore the Christian religion is the natural ally of all forms of freedom and the foe of determinism and dictatorship. God has
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given us free will that He may reign over free men. He wishes us to use that free will so as to live according to reason and order, not caprice.
So, if we believe in the living God who is the Preserver as well as the Creator of the material universe, we ought to be able to believe that He can change the order of nature for a sufficient reason.
The Incarnation is such a reason, and the Incarnation is unique. It never happened before. It will never happen again. If then we are asked why there were miracles in the first century but not in the twentieth, we reply that the Incarnation took place in that period and not in this. All the miracles which we are bound to believe genuine took place in direct connection with the Incarnation. We do not say that no miracles took place in Old Testament times or in later times, but we are free to keep an open mind about all such miracles.
Miracles are always possible, but in ordinary times they are most improbable. We do not expect the lives of even holy men to be full of miracles, as our medieval forefathers did. We think that the uniformity of nature is very seldom changed. If we are to believe that a particular miracle has taken place, we must have sufficient evidence for it.
1. External Evidence There must be external evidence as for any other event in history. The more wonderful and unusual an event is, the better evidence is needed. Thus we require more evidence that a commoner was raised to the throne than we do for the succession of the king,s eldest son, and much more if we are to believe that someone rose from the dead.
2. Internal Evidence And we also require internal evidence. There must be a sufficient reason for a miracle. We could not believe that an ordinary man, or even Plato or Shakespeare, was born of a virgin. We believe it unhesitatingly of Jesus Christ. In the case of the great Christian miracles we have ample evidence both external and internal.
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We must not assume that a miracle has taken place if the facts can be explained without one. There are two important differences between the miracles recorded in the New Testament and those recorded in the Old Testament. The New Testament miracles were set down by contemporaries whose names are in most cases known, whereas the Old Testament miracles were in most cases, if not all, set down by unknown writers living many generations after the events described. Further, some of the New Testament miracles are necessary to the Christian Faith which cannot be understood without them. This is not true of the Old Testament miracles, except the story of the escape of Israel from Egypt, the events at Sinai, and the crossing of the Jordan. These must be true on the whole, for the later history of Israel requires them.1 But it is not certain that the events described were miraculous (though no doubt they were believed to be so, and it may be held that the separation of the Chosen People provides sufficient reason for miracles).
There appears to be sufficient evidence that miracles, in particular the visible ministry of angels, have occurred in later times. But belief in them is not necessary to the Christian religion.
That our Lord Jesus Christ was born of a virgin and had no earthly father is a fundamental dogma accepted by all Christians from the earliest times. The principal evidence for it is found in the Gospels according to St. Luke and St. Matthew.
The Third Gospel was written by St. Luke, the companion of St. Paul. He was not a Jew but a Greek, a physician (Col. 4:14) and, as his two books show, one of the most careful and accurate historians of the ancient world. He tells us (St. Luke 1:3) that he had taken special trouble to ascertain what had happened. He appears to have been at Jerusalem for two years (Acts 24:27 at a time when many
1
W. J. Phythian-Adams, The Call of Israel.
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of those who had been with the Lord Jesus were still alive including St. James, the Lord,s brother (Acts 21:18). His account of the birth of our Lord is to be found in the first two chapters of his Gospel. These chapters are based on a source different from those of the rest of the book and were probably written in Aramaic. The transition at 1:5 from St. Luke,s style to that of his source, visible in the English and much more striking in the original Greek, is a transition from a florid Greek style to a simple style which might be an imitation of the Books of Kings, thoroughly Hebrew both in form and matter. St. Luke,s source, then, comes from an Aramaic-speaking Christian circle, and its naïve simplicity and freedom from such extravagant marvels as we find in the passages peculiar to St. Matthew (17:27, 27:53) show that it is of extremely early date. It was probably written by the Blessed Virgin herself or by someone intimate with her, for it represents her point of view throughout (1:26-56, 2:19, 34, 48, 51).1
The author of the First Gospel is unknown. Modern scholars are agreed that it was probably not written by St. Matthew because Papias, a second-century writer, tells us that St. Matthew wrote in Hebrew, whereas this Gospel is certainly not a translation from the Hebrew, and because the Gospel is clearly based on St. Mark,s Gospel which seems unlikely (though not impossible) if the writer was himself an apostle. (But St. Matthew must have had some connection with it, or it would not have been given his name. It is a probable conjecture that he wrote a collection of the sayings of our Lord, commonly called Q,2 which appears to be one of the chief sources of the First Gospel, and to have also been used by St. Luke.) It is usually held that the First Gospel was written towards the end of the first century in Galilee. The account of our Lord,s birth and infancy in the first two chapters represents St. Joseph,s point of view, as St. Luke,s account represents the Blessed Virgin,s. Now, the sons and grandsons of St. Joseph presided over the Church of Jerusalem till well into the second century. It is certain that this Gospel (which was the most popular of the four) could not have been
1
The question of the variant reading in one Syriac version is omitted here as quite unimportant.2
From the German Quelle, source; according to others, chosen by Armitage Robinson as the next letter to P.
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universally accepted without their sanction. It probably represents their family tradition, and it is as Jewish in spirit as the first two chapters of St. Luke, but in a different way.
The two accounts are completely independent. St. Luke tells the story of the birth of St. John Baptist, the Annunciation, the visit of the shepherds, the presentation in the Temple. The First Gospel tells the story of Joseph,s dream, the visit of the wise men, and the flight into Egypt. St. Luke explains how our Lord came to be born at Bethlehem; the First Gospel, why He was brought up at Nazareth. They do not contradict one another anywhere, but they cover different ground. Both agree that He was born at Bethlehem, but brought up at Nazareth. Both agree that His Mother was a virgin.
We have therefore two completely independent witnesses.
The Virgin Birth is not directly mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament, but it is nowhere denied. Our Lord is called "the son of Joseph" in St. John 1:45, 6:42, but in both cases by strangers who cannot be supposed to have known the facts about His birth (which must, for obvious reasons, have been kept secret). St. Mark begins his Gospel with our Lord,s Baptism. St. John begins his with the witness of St. John the Baptist (though St. John 1:13 may be an allusion to the Virgin Birth). St. Paul does not mention the subject in any of his surviving epistles (why should he?), but he was so intimate with St. Luke that he must have known what was known to St. Luke: Gal. 4:4 may be an allusion to the Virgin Birth. No writer of the New Testament ever calls our Lord the son of Joseph (which was the natural way of referring to Him) except St. John in the two passages above mentioned.
St. Ignatius (about 115) calls the Virgin Birth one of "the three mysteries of shouting" that is, now proclaimed to all. From his time onwards it was accepted by all orthodox Christians. There were, it is true, heretical sects which denied the Virgin Birth, but they also denied the Godhead of Jesus Christ. All who believed Him to be God, and some who did not (for instance, Muhammad, and Socinus, the founder of Unitarianism), accepted the Virgin Birth.
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It is sometimes argued that our Lord,s claim to be the son of David implies that He was the son of Joseph. This objection is based on a misunderstanding. He was legally, but only legally, of the house of David. But it was the legal aspect in which the Jews were interested. We know nothing of the parentage of the Blessed Virgin (except that she was Elizabeth,s cousin St. Luke 1:36). The traditional names of her parents come from an apocryphal gospel which is of no historical value. Our Lord,s claim to be the heir of David, to have sprung out of Judah (Heb. 7:14, Rev. 5:5), is based on the fact that legally, though not actually, He was the son of Joseph.
So much for the positive evidence. There is also very important negative evidence. Let us assume for the sake of argument that the story of the Virgin Birth is not true. We have still to account for its existence. It can only have come from a Jewish source or from a Gentile source.
As the two accounts of it that we have are both thoroughly Jewish, the theory of a Jewish source is much more likely. But we are at once met by the difficulty that the Jews did not honor virginity. To die a virgin was to them one of the greatest of misfortunes (Judges 11:37, etc.). No one could serve as a priest or be a member of the Sanhedrin unless he were married. It was regarded as the first duty of both men and women to marry, produce children, and replenish the earth (Gen. 9:1). There was no celibacy in the Hebrew religion.1 Therefore it is quite contrary to Jewish ideas that the Messiah should be born of a virgin, as abhorrent as drinking blood (St. John 6:53, 60).
It has, however, been suggested that the story of the Virgin Birth is based on a misunderstanding of Isa. 7:14 ("Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel"), and that the argument was, "The Messiah was to be born of a virgin; Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah; therefore He must have been born of a virgin; therefore He was born of a virgin."
But this objection will not bear examination. The Hebrew word
1
The Essenes were celibate, but they were very unorthodox, and they had no influence on the New Testament.
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in Isaiah does not mean a virgin, but a young woman, married or unmarried. It is not a prophecy of the Messiah, and no emphasis is laid on the mother,s virginity. It is a prophecy of an Assyrian invasion, and the point is that before the child, who is shortly to be born, is old enough to know right from wrong, the Assyrians will have destroyed Samaria and Damascus, and the population will be reduced to famine rations (butter and honey). There is no evidence that anyone ever referred this passage to the Messiah until the writer of St. Matthew,s Gospel did so (1:22), but he was fond of taking passages of the prophets out of their context and referring them to incidents in our Lord,s life. It was the event which caused the reference, not the reference the belief in the event. In St. Luke,s account which is probably the older of the two, there is no reference to this passage in Isaiah.
We conclude, then, that the story of the Virgin Birth cannot be a Jewish legend.
It is most unlikely that the circle of devout and orthodox Jews to which the two Gospels introduce us would have listened for a moment to Gentile stories, the "abominations of the heathen". There were many Greek stories of heroes sprung from the union of gods and mortal women. Such stories were told even of historical characters such as Plato and Alexander the Great. But there was no story of a virgin birth, in the proper sense, among the Greeks or any other nation. Professor Lobstein has ransacked the world for such stories and has found nothing even remotely resembling the story of the Virgin Birth in the Gospels. The only known legend which is anything like it is the story in some of the later lives of the Buddha that he was born of a virgin, which is not found in the earlier and more authentic lives nor in any Buddhist book written before Christ or in the early centuries after Christ. It is probably due to Christian influence.
But if it is incredible that the story of the Virgin Birth could have come from either a Jewish or a Gentile source, we cannot account for the rise of the story except by believing that it is true.
So much for the external evidence, positive and negative. It would be very difficult to accept this or any evidence, however strong,
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for the virgin birth of an ordinary man; for a virgin birth is a miracle, and we can see no reason why God should work a miracle of this kind in the case of even a Plato or a Shakespeare.
But Jesus Christ is not an ordinary man. He is not even a Plato or a Shakespeare. He is the Son of God incarnate and is therefore absolutely unique. No one else was ever born of a virgin, but then, no one else was the Incarnate Son of God or ever will be.
We do not believe that He is the Son of God because He was born of a Virgin, but we believe that He was born of a Virgin because we believe on other grounds that He is the Son of God, and because there is sufficient reason for God to work a miracle in this case though perhaps not in the case of any other man. We do not expect anyone who does not believe in the Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ to believe in the Virgin Birth (though, as we have seen, Muhammad and Socinus did so), but we maintain that anyone who believes that our Lord Jesus Christ is God Incarnate ought to have no difficulty, with such strong evidence, in believing that He was born of a Virgin.
We dare not say that God the Father could not have made His Son to be born of two human parents, but we say that though the virgin birth of any other man would be incredible or almost incredible, the Virgin Birth of the Son of God is in accordance with all that we know of God,s dealings with His creatures. In this case and in this case only, there is sufficient reason for God to work a unique miracle and, to this extent, to alter the course of nature.
For if Jesus Christ had been the son of Joseph or any other man, it would be impossible to avoid believing that the Son of God united Himself to a new human person. In that case either Jesus Christ is the amalgamation of two persons, one Divine and one human (which is the Nestorian heresy), or He destroyed the human person and took his place, which is inconsistent with the love and justice of God. Every child that is born of a human father is a new person. But Jesus Christ was not a new person. He was the eternal Son of God. It seems to have been for this reason that He was born without a human father. He took human nature in order to redeem mankind; but He did not become a new human person, for this would have been to act against reason which even God cannot do.
Moreover, every human being inherits from his parents a tendency to sin which is called by theologians "original sin". It was from this that our Lord came to free mankind. But He could not have freed men from it if He had not been free from it Himself. And it
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is hard to see how He could have been free from it Himself if He had been born like any other child of two human parents.
Therefore, if we believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, not only is there sufficient internal evidence for His Virgin Birth, but it is more difficult to believe that He was begotten by an earthly father than that He was born of a Virgin.
There is, however, one line of defense of the Virgin Birth which we must entirely reject. It has been suggested that it was a case of what is called "parthenogenesis", which sounds scientific but is entirely unreasonable and irrelevant (as well as irreverent).
Parthenogenesis is the process found in some of the lower species of animals which are sometimes produced by the female parent only. No case of it has ever been known, not merely in man but in any species of mammals. If, then, our Lord,s birth had been a case of parthenogenesis, it would have been just as miraculous, just as much outside the order of nature, as we believe it to have been without any reference to parthenogenesis.
Besides, if it had been a case of parthenogenesis, it would have been a meaningless accident like the birth of a calf with five legs. To believe that our Lord,s birth was a freak of nature and had no connection with His nature or His character would be of no use whatever. We believe that He was born of a Virgin because He was the Son of God, not because some biological accident attended His birth. The theory of parthenogenesis is therefore to be rejected as merely stupid. Whatever He was, our Lord was not a freak.
Finally, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is a dogma the acceptance of which is a condition of membership of the Church. We have shown that there is sufficient evidence for it, both external and internal. We believe it on good authority, in the sense of "auctoritas". But besides this, the Church requires her members to accept it because it is a necessary part of the whole system of Christian teaching. No one is compelled to become or to remain a member of the Church; but if he wishes to do so, he must obey the conditions of membership, one of which is that he must accept the articles of the Apostles, and Nicene Creeds, including "born of the Virgin Mary". If anyone is not convinced by the
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evidence, he may say, "I do not find this evidence sufficient, but I know that the Church is wiser than I am, and I accept it on her authority". Or he may say, "Since I cannot honestly say that I accept this doctrine, I cannot be a full ember of the Church". In either case, such a man ought not to continue to serve as an ordained minister of the Church, for he would be bound to teach the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, and he cannot do so honestly if he does not believe it himself.
It has been argued that to say "I believe in Jesus Christ . . . born of the Virgin Mary" may mean no more than "her who is commonly known as the Virgin Mary"; as when we say "the Gospel according to St. Matthew", we do not necessarily commit ourselves to believing that St. Matthew wrote it. But such an argument is not really honest. The purpose of that article of the creed is to commit those who recite it to the belief that our Lord had no human father. To recite it without any such belief is to say that one believes what in fact one does not believe. If a man,s conscience allows him to do this, the Church is justified in saying that a man with such an ill-informed conscience is not a fit person to serve in her ministry. For the bishop, priest, or deacon is bound, not merely to recite the words at least twice every day,1 but to teach them to others, and to answer those who raise objections to them. And if one may recite this particular article of the Creed in one,s own sense, which is not that of the Church, why not any other?
The real difficulty which prevents people from believing in the Virgin Birth is not want of evidence, but a belief in a "closed universe", and the impossibility of miracles. But he who believes this, cannot believe in the Incarnation, and therefore cannot be a Christian at all.
The Virgin Birth was not part of the original Good News preached by the Apostles. It was a mystery which could only be revealed to those who had already accepted the claims of Jesus Christ.
1
Anglican bishops, priests, and deacons are under obligation to say Mattins and Evensong every day.
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But the Resurrection was from the very first the center of the message which the Apostles proclaimed. They preached to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ, the proof of which was that God had raised Him from the dead (Acts 2:24, 32; 3:15; 4:10; 5:31; 10:40; 26:23). St. Paul felt obliged to preach the Resurrection even to the philosophers of Athens (Acts 17:31), though the result was the failure of his work there.
The story of the Resurrection is this. When our Lord died on the cross, His human spirit passed into the condition of disembodied spirits which the Hebrews called Sheol and the Greeks Hades the "hell" of the Apostles, Creed (not to be confused with "hell" in its more usual sense, Gehenna, the abode of the devil). As this is a lower condition than earthly life, His passage into it is called "decent". His body was buried in the cave of Joseph of Arimathaea. On the following Sunday morning (three days later according to the Jewish custom of reckoning the days at both ends, but actually about forty hours), His spirit returned to His body and transformed it. He then passed through the rock to the outer air. After He had passed, the great stone which closed the mouth of the cave was rolled away by an earthquake disclosing the empty tomb.
His living body after the Resurrection was the same as that which had been crucified and buried as was shown by the marks of the nails in the hands and feet. But it was not the same in all respects. It had been mysteriously transformed and differed from ordinary human bodies in three ways:
a) Our Lord, though capable of eating (St. Luke 24:43; St. John 21:15; Acts 10:41) did not require food to support life.
b) He was no longer subject to the ordinary laws of space; He could appear suddenly in a locked room (St. John 20:19), and disappear from sight (St. Luke 24:31).
c) He was no longer liable to die; unlike Lazarus and other persons raised from the dead, He would die no more (Rev. 1:18).
The evidence for the resurrection of our Lord is extremely strong. We have four main accounts, all contemporary, and several lines of indirect proof.
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The first account is that given by St. Paul in I Cor. 15. He was a man of the highest intelligence and the best education. He had been an opponent and had been converted. He had devoted his whole life to preaching the Resurrection and given up for the sake of his work all that most men count valuable. Though he was not himself a witness of the Resurrection (he was, as he says, one born out of time), he was well acquainted with many who were: St. Peter (Gal. 1:18; I Cor. 15:5), St. James (Acts 15:12-13; 21:18; Gal. 1:19; I Cor. 15:7), and many others (I Cor. 15:6), of whom St. Barnabas was probably one. The Resurrection was the center of his whole teaching. His letters are full of references to it, and he had himself seen the risen Christ at his conversion (I Cor. 9:8; 15:1).
The second account is that given by St. Mark (16:1-8). The account is cut short, and the verses which follow are a later addition. (The account in St. Matthew 28 may be based on the lost ending of St. Mark. If not, it constitutes a fifth account. In any case it is independent of St. Paul, St. Luke, and St. John.) St. Mark,s account is the record of a contemporary, probably an eyewitness (if St. Mark 14:51 refers to the author as seems probable).
The third account is that given by St, Luke, a highly educated Greek accustomed to weigh evidence, who certainly knew St. James (Acts 21:18) and probably many other eyewitnesses, and was very intimate with St. Paul.
The fourth account is that given by St. John, either (as I think) the account of an eyewitness many years later, or at least based on the notes of an eyewitness.
These four accounts are completely independent of one another. They differ in minor details (whether there was one angel at the tomb or two), but this only shows their independence. Four accounts of any contemporary event usually differ in detail. On the main points of the story they agree. Some have argued that they contradict one another; that, for instance, the account in St. Luke mentions appearances only in Jerusalem, whereas the account in St. Matthew mentions appearances only in Galilee. The differences have been much exaggerated. There was plenty of time for the
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apostles to go to Galilee and return. There were obvious reasons why our Lord could not have shown Himself to the great body of disciples (I Cor. 15:6; St. Matt. 28:16) in Jerusalem, but the apostles had to go back to Jerusalem for Pentecost.
Besides these there is the later narrative in the Marcan Appendix (St. Mark 16:9-16) by an unknown author but certainly written in the first century.
There are also references in other books of the New Testament (I Peter 1:3, an eyewitness if the traditional authorship is correct; Heb. 13:20; Rev. 1:18; Acts passim).
Besides the direct evidence we cannot account for the origin of the Christian Church apart from the Resurrection. The disciples were scattered and thrown into despair by the arrest of our Lord. A few weeks later they are found collected into a community and boldly proclaiming the new gospel. Something very remarkable must have happened to cause this change. It is also, as we shall see, impossible to account for the tomb being empty on any other supposition.
The practice of keeping the first day of the week, which we find in the very earliest period, can only be due to some event of supreme importance which took place on that day. The Apostles did not keep Friday, the anniversary of the Lord,s death, but Sunday, the Lord,s Day, because it was on that day that He rose from the dead. The Resurrection is the central message of the Gospel which is the good news not merely that the Son of God has died for us, but that the Son of God has died and risen from the dead.
Those who will not accept the Gospel or who believe so firmly in the dogma that miracles are impossible that they must find some non-miraculous explanation of everything have produced one theory after another to avoid the clear testimony of the facts.
Some have held that our Lord never died but merely swooned on the Cross. This theory is now universally rejected.
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In the eighteenth century it was suggested that the disciples stole His body from the tomb. This is morally impossible. The Christian religion is not founded on deliberate fraud. The subsequent lives of the disciples show that they believed what they said if any men ever did.
It is argued that the body was stolen by others. But if the Jews stole it, why did they not produce it? If the Romans, why and how did the disciples come to believe so firmly in the Resurrection?
It is suggested that the appearances of our Lord after the Resurrection were "subjective visions" or hallucinations. But all the evidence shows that the disciples did not expect His appearances, and therefore could not have suffered from collective hallucination. He appeared to the eleven several times and once to five hundred at once (I Cor. 15:6). He was touched. He ate and drank. He conversed with them for long periods. His appearances had permanent and fundamental effects on their lives.
Was it, then, "objective vision"? Was our Lord really present, but as a ghost, not in the body? He took particular trouble to show that He was not a ghost. It was for this reason that He ate and drank, that He allowed Himself to be touched (St. Matt. 28:9; St. John 20:27).1 St. Paul based his whole teaching on the belief in the resurrection of the body. The survival of the soul would not have shocked the Athenians (Acts 17:32).
Moreover, if our Lord did not rise with His body, He deceived His disciples. Those who say that He rose in any sense say that His religion is true; but if He did not rise with His body, it is founded on a lie.
Besides, both "subjective" and "objective" vision theories fail to account for the empty tomb. The straits to which even able men are reduced when they deny the Resurrection in the interest of the dogma of the "closed universe" is shown by the absurd theory of Dr. Kirsopp Lake: St. Mary Magdalene went to the wrong tomb, and the Christian religion is founded on her mistake!
In conclusion, the Resurrection is absolutely necessary to the Gospel story which is unintelligible without it. Those who deny it must with it deny that any part of the New Testament is historical, that we know anything at all of the origin of the Christian religion.
1
"Touch Me not" (St. John 20:17), was perhaps a rebuke for trying to keep Him (Westcott). Archbishop Bernard suggested that the true reading is not :¬ BJ@L, touch not, but :¬ BJ`@L, fear not: cf. St. Matt. 28:10.
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We have seen that there is ample evidence for the Resurrection of our Lord, that few events in ancient history are supported by such abundant testimony, and that the whole of the New Testament is unintelligible and the early history of the Christian religion incredible without the Resurrection. We have now to see what the Resurrection meant. We know how our Lord rose from the dead. We have to see why He rose from the dead.
First, He rose that He might conquer death. Death in its relation to the body is the same for men as for other animals. But the death of a man differs from the death of a horse or a rabbit. The death of a man is the violent separation of the body from the immortal spirit, the rending asunder of the person. For the body is not, as Plato taught, merely the prison of the spirit. It is a necessary part of the human person which is not complete without it. To be deprived of one,s body is a mutilation. That mutilation is the punishment of sin: "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). It is useless to guess what form death would have taken if man had never sinned. We have to deal with man as he is, not with man as he might have been; and for man as he is, death is a punishment.
When our Lord rose from the dead never again to die, He overcame the power of death. He became "the firstfruits of them that slept", for as He rose, so we shall rise (I Cor. 15:16, 20).
Apart from Him we are under the power of death. We must die, and we have no certain hope of rising again. But if in this life we are united with Him and share the risen and victorious life which He gives to us through the Holy Ghost, we are no longer under the permanent control of death. We must still die, but death that is, the separation of spirit and body will be no more permanent for us than it was for Him. It is, however, of no use to us to be told that He survived death, but His body moldered in the grave. If that had been all, He would not have overcome death. We did not need Him to tell us that the spirit is immortal. Plato and many other pagans have believed that. It is the resurrection of the body, not
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the immortality of the soul, that is promised to us by the Resurrection of our Lord. Unless the body were destined to rise again, the spirit, though immortal, would still be separated from the body. Man would still be rent asunder. But the Resurrection of our Lord brings to us the good news that what is rent asunder by death is to be joined together again. It is as complete persons, not as disembodied spirits, that we are to be united with God in Heaven.
Second, our Lord rose from the dead that He might conquer Satan and the powers of evil. The chief purpose of the Incarnation was to deliver man from slavery to the Devil, into which he had fallen by his own fault. The Devil is not a rival god like Ahriman in the religion of the ancient Persians. Satan and his devils were created by God and created good, but by their own fault they became evil and induced man to become evil too. Hence Satan became the master of mankind. We have only to look around the world to see that he is still the master of mankind, except where the Resurrection of our Lord has broken his power. Our Lord, by rising from the dead and bringing into the world the power which is only given to those who are free from the control of death, broke the power of Satan. Wherever men accept the gospel of the Resurrection and receive through baptism the power of the Resurrection, they cease to be under the power of Satan. The history of the Church, properly understood, is the history of this deliverance. In Christian missions the Resurrection can be seen at work breaking the fetters that bind men,s spirits and therefore, very often, their bodies.
Hence we believe that our Lord has reconciled us to God by breaking the power of Satan over us, and making possible our restoration to what God meant us to be. This breaking of the power of Satan was brought about by His death and Resurrection, not by His death alone, for His death without His Resurrection would have been merely the defeat of good by evil, of God by Satan (Rom. 6:3-11; Eph. 2:4-6).
Our nature was made by our sins incapable of restoring itself. Therefore our Lord took to Himself a perfect human nature, in it broke the power of Satan over mankind, and by incorporating us with Himself made us partakers of His nature. So the "old man", the corrupt human nature, is gradually rooted out of us, and the
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"new man", the risen nature of Christ, takes its place. This process can be seen wherever the power of Christ is active, especially in the mission field.
Third, the Resurrection was the beginning of the glorification of our Lord,s manhood (Eph. 1). His body was glorified. It was no longer weak, mortal, corruptible (I Cor. 15:42-44), but glorious, immortal, incorruptible. Yet it was the same body that was crucified. His human spirit was glorified. He was still Man, but Man raised to the right hand of God. This process was completed at the Ascension, but it was begun by the Resurrection.
Fourth, the Resurrection was the means by which we also shall rise again and the pledge that we shall do so. St. Paul says, "If the dead be not raised, then is Christ not raised; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain" (I Cor. 15:13), appealing to the present power of the Resurrection like any modern missionary. This was a new thing in the world. Both Jews and Gentiles believed in personal survival, and some of them in the immortality of the soul, but Christians believe in the resurrection of the body (so did the Pharisees: Dan. 12:2; Acts 23:8).
But the Resurrection of our Lord does not promise us perpetual life similar to that which we have here, as expected by ancient pagans and modern Spiritists. Eternal life is something different from our present life, but something which we can begin to enjoy in this world (St. John 4:14, 10:28). It is life in union with God, life which only those who have experienced it can understand, life which alone is life indeed.
It is one of the gravest defects of modern Christian preaching and practice that we are afraid of being "other-worldly". The Christian religion is not merely a program of social reform. This life, and all that is in it, is important only because it is the school in which we are trained for our real life hereafter. The modern world
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does not believe in any life beyond the grave. But this unbelief cannot be reconciled with the Christian religion. If there is no resurrection, "we are of all men most pitiable" (I Cor. 15:15).
Therefore it is useless to pretend that our attitude towards social or political reform can ever be the same as that of people who have no belief in a future life. Christianity is not Christianity if it is not other-worldly. Happiness in this world for ourselves or for others is not our principal aim, but eternal life here and hereafter and our hope of this depends on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.1
The Resurrection of our Lord was followed by His Ascension into heaven. There is less evidence for the Ascension than for the Resurrection. Instead of four accounts we have only the direct evidence of St. Luke given in his Gospel and more fully in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. But St. Luke is a thoroughly trustworthy historian who knew some of those who were present and was as careful in his selection of evidence as any ancient historian could be.
There are also many allusions to the Ascension in other books of the New Testament. St. Paul refers to it (Rom. 8:34; Col. 3:1; Eph. 1:20, 4:10; Phil. 2:9; I Tim. 3:16). In the Epistle to the Hebrews it is the foundation of the author,s argument: Christ is the High Priest who has passed into the heavens, as the high priest on the Day of Atonement passed into the Holy of Holies (Heb. 1:3, 4:14, 8:1, 9:12, 24, 10:12, 12:2). It is also mentioned in I St. Peter 3:22 and in the Marcan Appendix (St. Mark 16:19).
The Ascension was necessary, for the appearances of our Lord after the Resurrection were not to continue indefinitely. There must have been some event to bring them to an end. When the disciples were asked, "If, as you say, your Master is not dead but risen, where is He now?" they answered, "He has ascended to the right hand of God." This answer is assumed by all parts of the New Testament.
1
For the connection between the Resurrection and the Atonement, see pp. 167171.
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If we had only St. Luke,s Gospel, we might suppose that the Ascension took place on the same day as the Resurrection. But St. Mark, St. Matthew, and St. John (in his last chapter which is an appendix) tell us that our Lord also appeared to the disciples in Galilee, which implies that they had time to go to Galilee and return. And the Acts tells us that the appearances went on for forty days, which is the usual Hebrew expression for a considerable time, but must have been fairly exact in this case as Pentecost was fifty days after the Passover.
"While they beheld, He was taken up; and a cloud received Him out of their sight." The traditional site of the Ascension is a spot on the road from Jerusalem to Bethany now occupied by a small mosque. It is on the brow of the hill just beyond the place where the city ceases to be visible. Our Lord appears to have risen up off the earth and passed into a cloud as a sign that He would be seen on earth no more. We are not to think of Him disappearing into the blue sky like a skylark, still less as "soaring through tracts unknown" to some astronomically remote place. The Ascension is much more wonderful and mysterious than that. He passed out of time and space altogether. He did not go up as one ascends in an airplane. He went up as an heir to the throne becomes king, as a boy goes up from the fourth form into the fifth form, as a soldier rises when he becomes a general. He is not "in the bright place far away", for He is "not far from each one of us" (Acts 18:27); but He is too glorious to be seen by human eye, except in vision as St. Paul saw Him at his conversion and was blind for three days (Acts 9:9), and as St. John in Patmos saw Him and fell at His feet as one dead (Rev. 1:17).
Therefore we are not to think of the Ascension in terms of astronomy. It has nothing to do with astronomy. If we are asked, "Where is He now?", we can only answer in symbolic language, "At the right hand of God", though we do not mean that God has a body and a right hand. He is out of space and time, but we can only think in terms of space and time. The events of the Incarnation
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are all mysteries. They have one side in space and time, the other outside. Our Lord was conceived and born in a particular place on a particular day, but He came into space and time from outside. He rose from the dead in Jerusalem on a particular Sunday morning, but the return of His spirit from the dead is outside our understanding. Likewise, His Ascension took place at a particular place and time, but He went out of space and time. All these events are partly historical and are therefore subject, so far as they are historical, to the ordinary rules of historical evidence. But they are also partly outside of history.
It is true that no one, so far as we know, who was not a disciple, saw our Lord after the Resurrection. It does not follow that no one else could have seen Him. Anyone who met the disciples going to Emmaus must have seen three men, not two. Anyone who had been present on that part of the Mount of Olives at the right moment would have seen the Ascension. No unbeliever saw our Lord after the Resurrection because He took care that no one should. He did not wish to force anyone,s belief. He did not wish to drive anyone mad, as might have happened if anyone had seen Him without faith. It is certain that some of those who did see Him did not expect to see Him and did not recognize Him at once though they knew Him so well (St. Luke 24:15, 31; St. John 20:15, 25; 21:4).
The Ascension is therefore an historical event, and it is also an event in the spiritual world, the exaltation of the Manhood of Jesus Christ to the glory of Heaven.
Why did our Lord withdraw from His disciples? For three reasons.
He could not have used His full power as long as He remained subject to the limitations of space and time, even modified as they were after His Resurrection (St. John 20:19, etc.). He could not have been at Jerusalem and at the same time at Antioch or Rome. But now He is equally with all His disciples wherever they may be.
He could not, it seems, have been mystically or sacramentally present if He had been physically and materially present.
He could not have sent the Holy Ghost unless He had Himself gone away (St. John 16:7). His disciples had to learn to stand by themselves with the help of His representative, the Holy Ghost. They would never have done this if He had remained visible in their midst.
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When our Lord had ascended into Heaven, He sat down at the right hand of God. Every reference to this event is connected with Psalm 110:1, treated as a prophecy of the Messiah. Christ is regarded as enthroned (Heb. 1:13, 10:13; Rev. 3:21). Ascension Day is the festival of Christ the King. (For this reason the modern addition of a special festival of Christ the King by the Roman Communion is superfluous.)
"Sitting" is, of course, a metaphor. It signifies not rest but triumph. The victorious King sits because He is the conqueror of death and Satan. Once, we are told, He was seen standing by St. Stephen at the moment of his death. This means that He is always ready to help (Acts 7:55; cf. Rev. 1:13, 5:6). The "right hand" means the position of highest honor and power.
He is not idle in Heaven but ceaselessly active, for His work of redemption is not finished. Mankind is not yet fully saved far from it! He is the Head of the Church (Eph. 4:15; Col. 2:19), the Mediator between God and man (I Tim. 2:5; Heb. 8:6, 9:15, 12:24), the Intercessor and Advocate for men with the Father (I St. John 2:1), not that the Father loves us any less than He does, but that His love is shown by His intercession, than which nothing is more pleasing to the Father.
He directs His Church from Heaven. He does not possess any earthly headquarters. All places and countries are the same to Him. The danger that the Church might have its center at Jerusalem, like the Church of the Old Testament, was removed by the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. In later times Rome and Constantinople have been great centers, but their dominance has been merely of human origin. The only Head of the Church is our Lord Jesus Christ, and her only headquarters is in Heaven. It is contrary to the universal character of the Christian religion that any one city, country, or nation should lead the Church, either permanently or by divine right. No one nation has any claim to the special favor of God, such as Dante claimed for the Romans, some Russian thinkers for the Russians (and some Englishmen for England). The "British Israel" theory carries this claim to the point of heresy, for St. Paul teaches that the heirs of Abraham are not those who are descended
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from Abraham (as the "British Israel" theorists fantastically claim that the English are), but those who have the faith of Abraham (Gal. 3:7 ff.).
Though Christ is in Heaven, He is not far away. Heaven is not a place but a state, and He is nearer to us than we are to one another. His ministry, exercised from Heaven, takes three forms: He is our King, our Prophet, and our Priest.
Our Lord told us that all authority had been given to Him in heaven and in earth (St. Luke 10:22; St. Matt. 11:27, 28:18). This authority included lordship over the angels (Eph. 1:21; Phil. 2:9; Heb. 1:4; I Pet. 3:22); over nature (Col. 1:16; Rev. 5:13); over man (St. Matt. 25:32; Rev. 2:26; etc.). The kingdom of this world, which He will render up to His Father at the last day (I Cor. 15:24), is to be distinguished from His eternal kingdom which, as we say in the Creed, will have no end1 (St. Luke 1:33).
The kingdom of the Lord on earth is not actual but potential that is, not what is but what ought to be and might be. The earth is His by right, but actually most of it is under the power of the Devil. The Church is not itself the Kingdom but is charged with the administration of the Kingdom on earth. (See pp. 252253.)
Our Lord is also the Prophet, the last and greatest of the Prophets of Israel. Their work was to declare to man the will of God, to say with authority "Thus saith the Lord". Our Lord, however, said, not "Thus saith the Lord", but "Verily, verily, I say unto you".
His prophetic work is exercised by means of God the Holy Ghost, who is the true and only Vicar or Representative of Christ (St. John 14:26). It is God the Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, who declares the will of God both to the Church as a whole and to each member of it (Acts 4:31, 15:28, 16:6-7, 20:23, 21:11, I St. John 2:20).
Our Lord is also the great High Priest who at His Ascension passed within the veil, as the earthly high priest did on the Day of Atonement and, being a high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek
1
This clause was inserted to exclude the teaching of Marcellus of Ancyra, see p. 64.
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(Heb. 6:20), offers perpetually to the Father the sacrifice or offering of His life once laid down. There can be no repetition of what was done for all on the Cross. His sacrifice is not repeated but perpetual in Heaven.
The Church on earth, of which He is the head, has her part in His work as King, as Prophet, and as Priest. The Apostles were given His authority to rule the Church, and that authority has been passed on to their successors in every generation. The duty of declaring to the world the will of God is laid upon the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit who from time to time sends prophets and teachers into the world and directs the rise of new movements required by successive generations. And the Church is permitted to share in the priestly work of the Lord in heaven, offering the work and the life and the gifts of men, in union with His perfect and sinless offering, to the Father. The Holy Eucharist is the means through which all offering on earth is brought into one. (See pp. 368379.)
Finally, our Lord is the Judge of men. All our life is being continually judged by Him, and He will come again at the end of the world to give His final judgment when His work as King, as Prophet, and as Priest in relation to this world will be brought to an end. (See pp. 4479.)
The Ascension of our Lord was followed by the descent of God the Holy Ghost. St. Luke connects the Ascension with what followed it rather than with what went before it. It is not so much the end of the Gospel as the beginning of the history of the Church.
The doctrine of the Person of the Holy Ghost, which is part of the doctrine of God, is the subject of this chapter. The doctrine of the work of the Holy Ghost in this world will be found in Chapter 37.
God the Holy Ghost is the Third Person (hypostasis) of the Holy Trinity. (The Prayer Book and the Authorized Version of the Bible
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use the old English expression "Holy Ghost". The modern fashion of always using the alternative "Holy Spirit" is an impoverishment of the English language. One of the rules of good style is to use, where possible, words of English derivation in preference to those of Latin derivation.)
The "Persons" of the Holy Trinity are not persons in the modern sense, or individuals. There is only one God. The Three Persons are one in essence. But they are not mere aspects of God. They are distinct enough to love one another.
Though the doctrine of God the Holy Ghost is taught by St. Paul, St. Luke, and St. John, it was not clearly understood for some time. (The author of Revelation speaks of "the seven spirits" where we should expect a reference to the Holy Ghost (Rev. 1:4); and the second-century writer Hermas, author of the "Shepherd", does not appear to be fully informed about it.) There are two subjects to be discussed, the Godhead of the Holy Ghost, and His distinct Personality.
The older theologians found in the Old Testament many references both to the Godhead and to the Personality of the Holy Ghost. But the doctrine of the Holy Trinity had not yet been revealed. In the Old Testament the Spirit of God is a power or influence not yet known to be personal. We are justified in treating passages in the Old Testament as carrying for us the Christian meaning of the Holy Ghost, so long as we do not suppose that they had this meaning for their authors; as we refer Isa. 53 and Ps. 110:1 to our Lord Jesus Christ, but we do not suppose that this was what the authors intended.
The first reference is Gen. 1:3: "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters". Tertullian (about A.D. 200) in his work on Baptism says that the Spirit consecrated the element of water, and that it was set apart to be "the car of the Holy Ghost" at baptism. Other references are Num. 27:18, Neh. 9:20, Ps. 51:11, Isa. 42:1, 61:1, Hag. 2:5, etc. In the later books of the Old Testament "the Spirit of God" means God in His relation to men. The later Jews did not like to think of God as acting directly on men and therefore preferred to say "the angel of God", "the spirit of God", "the wisdom of God".
The use of the words "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee"
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(St. Luke 1:35), spoken by the Angel Gabriel to Blessed Mary, was probably understood by her in the Old Testament sense, for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was not yet revealed. But we cannot doubt that this expression is used because it was the Third Person of the Trinity who gave to Blessed Mary the power to become the mother of the Messiah though a virgin. "He was conceived through the Holy Ghost."
St Paul says (I Cor 3:16): "Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" In St. Mark. 2:29 our Lord warns His hearers against blasphemy against the Holy Ghost as worse than attacks on Himself. In II Thess. 3:5 "May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ", St. Basil (On the Holy Spirit, 52) says that as "the Lord" cannot refer to the Father or to the Son, it must refer to the Holy Ghost; cf. also I Thess. 3:12-13. In II Cor. 3:15-18, St. Paul identifies the Spirit with the Lord that is, with the God of Israel; and in Acts 5:3-4, to lie to the Holy Ghost is to lie to God. In St. Luke 11:20 our Lord speaks of "the finger of God", whereas in the parallel passage in St. Matt. 12:28 He uses the words "the Spirit of God". It is for this reason that the famous hymn, the "Veni Creator", calls the Holy Ghost "Digitus dextrae Dei", Finger of the right hand of God.
The Godhead of the Holy Ghost was denied by Arius who taught that both the Son and the Holy Ghost were created beings. Macedonius, Bishop of Constantinople, a member of the party which was on its way back from Arianism to orthodoxy, accepted the Godhead of the Son but denied that of the Holy Ghost (A.D. 360). His teaching was condemned by the First Council of Constantinople in 381. It is clear from all the passages in the New Testament which refer to the Holy Ghost that He is God and not a created being. In II Cor. 13:14, Phil. 2:1, St. Matt. 28:19, besides the passages already mentioned, He is placed on a level with our Lord Jesus Christ.
The separate personality of the Holy Ghost is a more disputed question. It cannot be proved from the Old Testament, but the evidence of the New Testament is quite clear. The two chief
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passages are Rom. 13 and the last discourses in the Fourth Gospel. In the former passage St. Paul plainly speaks of the Holy Spirit as a Person, not a mere impersonal influence. "The Spirit helpeth our infirmity", "the Spirit Himself" (not "itself" as in the A. V.) "maketh intercession for us", "the mind of the Spirit". In I Cor. 12:11 we find "all these worketh in one Spirit dividing to each man severally as He will", and in Eph. 4:11 the apostle forbids his readers to grieve the Spirit of God. In St. Matt. 12:31 the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is contrasted with blasphemy against the Son of Man, which implies that the Holy Ghost is personal like the Son of Man and equal to Him. But it is in St. John 14-16 that the Paraclete1 (Ò A"DV680J@H, masculine) is promised, and that His Godhead, His personality, and His functions are most clearly revealed: see 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7-14.
The words for "Spirit" in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, differ in gender. In Hebrew the word in ruach, which is feminine as also in other Semitic languages. In Greek the word is pneuma (B<,Ø:"), which is neuter. This is why JÎ A<,Ø:" "ÛJ` (Rom. 8:16, 26) must be translated "the Spirit Himself", for the pronoun in Greek follows the gender of the substantive, whereas in English, which has no proper genders, it follows the sense. In Latin the word is Spiritus, which is masculine as is also the German Geist. It is possible that the feminine gender of the word in Semitic languages led to the strange notion held by Muhammad that the Trinity of the Christians was Father, Mother, and Son!
One more subject in connection with God the Holy Ghost remains to be discussed, the doctrine of the Procession.
The relation of the Holy Ghost to the Father is