says: "The natures are not contradictory or mutually exclusive, but their affinity or kinship expresses their reciprocal susceptibility. God is, as it were, the eternal possibility of being incarnated, man the permanent capability of incarnation."1

The human nature is not less but more truly human for such exalted development and fellowship; since such exalted fellowship is none other than the fulfilment of the original intention of the Creator in forming man after His own image. And the divine nature is no less properly divine for the assumption of human nature into itself according to human laws and natural conditions; inasmuch as God's being is the archetype of man's being, and the normal life of man's constitution is the noblest and most perfect organ of God's presence and revelation.

Recognizing this reciprocal aptitude between divine being and human being, affirming the organic oneness of divine nature and human nature in the conception and birth of Jesus, a sound Christology may not think of the incarnate Son of God independently of His humanity, nor think of the new creation of man independently of the Deity of Jesus. Of the only-begotten Son of God we affirm nothing, deny nothing, when we speak of normal development. So of the manhood of the Son of Man we affirin nothing, deny nothing, when we speak of the extraordinary positive capacities of Jesus and the sinless perfection of His development. We speak of the mysterious organic unity, of the personality of Jesus, no less really man than God, no less properly God than man. We speak of the One who is both der Menschgewordene Gott and der Vergottete Mensch.

The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 473.

A definite line of difference is to be drawn between the transcendent Logos and the immanent Logos. The immanent Logos, as to His divine essence, is identical with the transcendent Logos, but He is active under a creatural mode of existence. It is of the Word become flesh, of the man assumed into union with God, of Jesus the Christ that Christology affirms normal growth, a proper physical, moral and intellectual development.

It is a proposition which no one denies, that growth conditions the maturity of manhood. The notion of a man who had not been conceived and born, who had not from infancy grown in stature and increased in wisdom, would be a monstrosity. On the other hand, it is the central article of the Christian creed that the Word became flesh,' that God became incarnate in the humanity of Jesus. To deny it is antichrist. "Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it cometh; and now it is in the world already." These two essential moments in the idea concerning the Christ involve the law of development.

Faith in the incarnation does not imply that God in the person of the Son became an infant, or that He became an adult by an arbitrary act of omnipotent Will. It implies that God became man conformably to man's constitution as now existing. "It seemeth," says Hooker, "a thing inconsonant that the world should honour any other as the Savior but Him whom it honoureth as the

1

I Jno. iv. 2, 3. "The heresies, which deny the truth of the flesh of Jesus Christ, assume, and by this very thing confirm, his Deity, since they could not reconcile with this his flesh, as worthy of it."—Bengel.

Creator of the world, and in the wisdom of God it hath not been thought convenient to admit any way of saving man but by man himself." And man's constitution includes a dynamic beginning, a process of growth, a stage of relative maturity on earth and ultimate perfection in the transcendent realm. God in fact became man in that He in the person of the Son really entered into the natural. order, assuming the substance of man according to the generic idea and laws of mankind. Conserving and obeying these laws, the mystery of the incarnation becomes in one respect as man himself becomes, by an organic process. The birth of Jesus was its real beginning; His childhood and youth the normal unfolding and gradual actualization of the beginning; His ministry and sufferings, His conflicts and victories, were its relative maturity; His glorification was its final perfection. The Son of Mary exalted to the right hand of God, possessing all authority in heaven and on earth, presents to faith the ideal of the incarnation.

Whenever Christology denies of Jesus Christ any property or element that belongs to the essential nature of mankind we get in effect a docetic Christ, and a docetic Christ is not the Christ of the New Testament.

1 Ecc. Pol., V., 51, 3.

CHAPTER V.

HIS BAPTISM.

$239.

When Jesus had passed through the period of childhood and youth, and had acquired the requisite moral and religious character, He was prepared to begin His public ministry. Then He came to John, His great forerunner, to be baptized of him in the river Jordan.

The circumcision had adopted Him into the supernatural communion of the covenant people. Living in retirement and pursuing an ordinary secular vocation, He by the grace of the covenant led the life of a devout Jew, fulfilling the Ten Commandments and observing all the requirements of the ceremonial law blameless. But the hour had now come for which His birth of the Virgin, His circumcision and His devout communion with God during youth and early manhood were only the needful qualification. Recognizing His high vocation and willing to accept it, another sacramental transaction became necessary.

As in His conception by the Holy Spirit so at His baptism two factors, the divine and the human, reach the point of culmination. Then the fitness of humanity ripening in the history of the elect people, perfected in the person of the Virgin, and the historical manifestation of God by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit meet. The epoch was a crisis in which each factor conditions the virtue of the other. Now, when Jesus comes to John, His mature personal qualification for the great vocation

of the Christ and the requisite consecration by God to this vocation meet. As in the conception, so at His baptism, Christology has to emphasize the two factors of the mystery, each supposing the presence and determining influence of the other.

§ 240.

The baptism of Jesus is to be studied under two aspects: objectively and subjectively.

Objectively, the baptism was the recognition of Jesus as the Christ by the Father, and the consecration of Jesus to His mediatorial work.

Subjectively considered, the submission of Jesus to the baptism of John was the recognition of His Messianic vocation, and the dedication of Himself to it.

Christology has to maintain that the baptism by John has real significance for the person of the Christ and for His mediatorial work.

1. Of Jesus John Baptist said: After me cometh a man which is become before me: for He was before me, and I knew Him not; but that He should be made maniifest to Israel, for this cause came I baptizing with water. And John bare witness, saying, I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon Him. And I knew Him not: but He that sent me to baptize with water, He said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon Him, the same is He that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.'

The baptism by John in obedience to God's command was the recognition of this Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, as the