The testimony which,
according to Scripture, Christ has given of Himself is developed and confirmed
by the preaching of the apostles. The confession that a man, named Jesus, is the
Christ, the Only-Begotten of the Father, is in such direct conflict with our
experience and with all of our thinking, and especially with all the
inclinations of our heart, that no one can honestly and with his whole soul
appropriate it without the persuasive activity of the Holy Spirit. By nature
everybody stands in enmity to this confession, for it is not a confession
natural to man. No one can confess that Jesus is the Lord except through the
Holy Spirit, but neither can anyone speaking by the Holy Spirit call Jesus
accursed; he must recognize Him as his Savior and King, (1 Cor. 12:3).
Hence when Christ appears
on earth and Himself confesses that He is the Son of God, He did not leave it at
that, but He also had a care, and He continues to have a care, that this
confession finds entrance into the world, and is believed by the church. He
called His apostles, and He instructed them, and made them witnesses to His
words and deeds, to His death and resurrection. He gave them the Holy Spirit who
brought them personally to the confession that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of
the living God, (Matt. 16:16), and who later caused them, from the day of
Pentecost on, to minister as preachers of those things which their eyes had
seen, and they beheld, and their hands had handled of the Word of life, (1 John
1:1). The apostles were really not the real witnesses. The Spirit of truth,
proceeding from the Father, is the original, infallible, and almighty witness to
Christ, and the apostles are that only in Him and through Him, (John 15:26; Acts
5:32). And it is that same Spirit of truth who by means of the testimony of the
apostles brings the church of all ages to the confession and preserves them in
it: Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we
believe and are sure that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, (John
6:68-69).
When
the four Evangelists in regular order report the events of the life of Jesus,
they usually refer to Him simply by the name of Jesus without any more
particular qualification or addendum. They tell us that Jesus was born in
Bethlehem, that Jesus was led into the wilderness, that Jesus saw the multitude
and went up the mountain, and so on. Jesus, the historical person who lived and
died in
Still, in the letters of
the apostles the use of this name without qualification is rare. Usually the
name occurs in connection with: the Lord, Christ, the Son of God, and like
designations, and the full name usually reads: Our Lord Jesus Christ. But,
irrespective of whether the name Jesus is used alone or in connection with other
names, the connection with the historical person who was born in
The whole New Testament,
that of the epistles or letters as well as that of the gospels, rests on the
foundation of historical events. The Christ-figure is not an idea nor an ideal
of the human mind, as many in past ages maintained, and as some in our time also
assert, but is a real figure who manifested Himself in a particular period and
in a particular person in the man Jesus.
True, the various events
in the life of Jesus recede into the background in the letters. Those letters
have a different purpose than the gospels have. They do not chronicle the
history of the life of Jesus but point out the significance which that life has
for the redemption of mankind. But all of the apostles are familiar with the
person and life of Jesus, are acquainted with His words and deeds, and they
proceed to show us that this Jesus is the Christ, exalted by God to His own
right hand, in order to grant repentance and the forgiveness of sins, (Acts
2:36; 5:31).
Often, therefore, in the
letters of the apostles mention is made of events in the life of Jesus. They
picture Him before the eyes of their auditors and readers, (Gal. 3:1). They
stress the fact that John the Baptist was His herald and precursor, (Acts 13:25;
19:4), that He comes from the family of Judah and the stem of David, (Rom. 1:3;
Rev. 5:5 and 22:16), that He was born of a woman, (Gal. 4:4), was circumcised on
the eighth day, (Rom. 15:8), that He was brought up in Nazareth, (Acts 2:22;
3:6), and that He also had brothers, (1 Cor. 9:5; Gal. 1:19). They tell us that
He was perfectly holy and sinless,1 that He presented Himself to us as an
example, (1 Cor. 11:1 and 1 Pet. 2:21), and that He spoke words that have
authority for us, (Acts 20:35; 1 Cor. 7:10-12). But it is especially His dying
that is significant for us. The cross stands at the central point in the
apostolic preaching. Betrayed by one of the twelve apostles whom He chose, (1
Cor. 11:23; 1 Cor. 15:5), and not recognized by the princes of this world as the
Lord of glory, (1 Cor. 2:8), He was put to death by the Jews, (Acts 4:10; 5:30;
1 Thess. 2:15), dying on the accursed wood of the cross. But, even though He
suffered greatly in Gethsemane and upon
From these few data it is
adequately evident that the apostles did not deny, ignore, or neglect the facts
of Christianity but that they fully honored them and penetrated their spiritual
significance. No trace is to be found in them of any separation or conflict
between the redemptive event and the redemptive word, however much some in the
past have tried to postulate such a conflict. The redemptive event is the
actualization of the redemptive word; in the second the first takes on its real
and concrete form and is at the same time therefore its illumination and
interpretation.
If
any doubt about this remains at all, it is entirely removed by the battle which
the apostles already in their day had to conduct. It was not merely in the
second, third, and following centuries but also in the apostolic period that
certain men appeared who regarded the facts of Christianity of subordinate and
transient importance, or else ignored them altogether, and who held that the
idea was the main thing or in itself quite enough. What difference does it make,
they argued, whether or not Christ bodily rose from the grave? If only He lives
on in the spirit, our salvation is sufficiently assured! But the apostle Paul
thought very differently about that and in 1 Corinthians 15 he placed the
reality and the significance of the resurrection in the clearest possible light.
He preaches Christ according to the Scriptures, that Christ who, according to
the counsel of the Father, died, was buried, and was raised again, who after His
resurrection was seen of many disciples, and whose resurrection is the
foundation and surety of our salvation. And, if possible, John puts even more
emphasis on the fact that he is a declarer of what he has seen with his eyes and
handled with his hands of the Word of life, (1 John 1:1-3). The principle of the
antichrist is this that he denies the incarnation of the Word; and the Christian
confession, to the contrary, consists of the belief that the Word has become
flesh, that the Son of God has come by water and by blood, (John 1:14 and 1 John
3:2-3 and 5 :6). The whole apostolic preaching of the letters and of the
gospels, hence of the whole New Testament, comes down to the claim that Jesus,
born of Mary and crucified, is—witness the evidence of His exaltation—the
Christ, the Son of God.
Now it deserves notice
that, in connection with the content and purpose of the apostolic preaching, the
use of the single name Jesus, without further qualification, is rare in the
letters. Usually the apostles speak of Jesus Christ, or of Christ Jesus, or,
even more fully, of the or our Lord Jesus Christ. Even the Evangelists who in
their chronicle for the most part speak of Jesus make use, either at the
beginning or at an important turning point of their gospel, of the full name
Jesus Christ. This they do by way of indicating who the person is concerning
whom they are writing their evangel. In the Acts and in the letters this usage
becomes the regular practice. The apostles speak not of a human being whose name
was Jesus, but, by adding the terms Christ and Lord, and the like, they give
expression to their appreciation of who that man is. They are preachers of the
gospel that in the man Jesus the Christ of God has appeared on the earth.
Thus they had gradually,
during their going about with Him, learned to know Him. And especially after
that important hour in Caesarea Philippi a light had dawned for them upon His
person, and they had all confessed with Peter that He was the Christ, the Son of
the living God, (Matt. 16:16). Thus Jesus had revealed Himself to them, at first
more or less concealed under the name Son of man, but gradually more clearly and
plainly as the end of His life approached. In the high-priestly prayer He
designates Himself by the name Jesus Christ whom the Father has sent, (John
17:3). Precisely because He gave Himself out to be the Christ, the Son of God,
He was charged by the Jewish court with blasphemy and was condemned to die,
(Matt. 26:63). And the superscription above His cross read: Jesus of Nazareth
the King of the Jews, (Matt. 27:37; John 19:19).
It is true that the
disciples could not reconcile these Messianic claims of Jesus with His
approaching passion and death, (Matt. 16:22). But through the resurrection, and
after it, they learned to know also the necessity and the meaning of the cross.
Now they recognized that God had by the resurrection made this Jesus, whom the
Jews had destroyed. to be Lord and Christ and had exalted Him to be a Prince and
Savior, (Acts 2:36; 5:31). This does not mean to say that before His
resurrection Jesus was not yet Christ and Lord, and that He became this only
after the resurrection, for Christ had proclaimed Himself as the Christ
beforehand and He was then also acknowledged and confessed as such by the
disciples, (Matt. 16:16). But before the resurrection He was Messiah in the form
of a servant, in a form and shape which concealed His dignity as Son of God from
the eyes of men. In the resurrection and after it He laid aside that form of a
servant, He reassumed the glory which He had with the Father before the world
was, (John 17:5), and was therefore appointed as Son of God in power, according
to the spirit of holiness that dwelt in Him, (Rom. 1:3).
It is therefore that Paul
can say that He now, after it has pleased God to reveal His Son to him, no
longer knows Christ according to the flesh, (2 Cor. 5:16). Before His repentance
He knew Christ only according to the flesh, judged Him solely by His external
appearance, according to the form of a servant in which He walked about on the
earth. Then he could not believe that this Jesus, who was without any glory and
was even hanged on the cross and put to death, was the Christ. But by his
conversion all that has changed. Now he knows and judges Christ not according to
appearance, not according to external, temporal, servant forms, but according to
the spirit, according to what was in Christ, according to what He really was
internally and in His resurrection externally proved to be.
And the same can in a
sense be said of all the apostles. It is true that they had before the passion
and death of Christ been brought to a believing confession of His Messianic
reality. But in their mind there remained an irreconcilability of this reality
with the passion and death. The resurrection, however, reconciled this conflict
for them. He was to them now the same Christ who has descended into the lower
parts of the earth and is ascended up far above all heavens, in order that He
might fulfill all things, (Eph. 4:9). Speaking of Christ, the apostles think in
one and the same breath of the deceased and of the raised Christ, of the
crucified and of the glorified Christ. They connect their gospel with the
historical Jesus not only, who lived a few years back in Palestine and died
there, but also to that same Jesus as He is, exalted, and seated at the right
hand of God’s power. They stand, so to speak, at the point of bisection of the
horizontal line, which is tied to the past, to history, and the vertical line,
which connects them with the living Lord in heaven. Christianity is therefore an
historical religion, but at the same time a religion which lives in the present
out of eternity. The disciples of Jesus are not, according to His historical
name, Jesuites, but, according to the name of His office, Christians.
This peculiar position
which the apostles took in their preaching after the resurrection is the reason
why they no longer referred to Jesus by His historical name merely, but
virtually always spoke of Him as Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, our Lord Jesus
Christ, and so on. As a matter of fact the name Christ soon lost its official
significance in the circle of the disciples and began to take on that of a given
name. The conviction that Jesus was the Christ was so strong that He could
simply be called Christ, even without the article preceding it. This occurs a
few times even in the gospels. But with the apostles, particularly with Paul,
this becomes the rule. Moreover, the two names, Jesus Christ, were more than
once reversed, especially by Paul, with a view to accentuating even more the
Messianic reality of Christ, and then the name became Christ Jesus. This
designation, Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus, was the pre-eminent name for the
early churches. The use and significance of the name in the Old Testament is
carried over to Christ in the New. The Name of the Lord, or the Name alone, was
in the Old Testament the denomination of the revealed glory of God. In the days
of the New Testament that glory has appeared in the person of Jesus Christ; and
thus the strength of the church now stands in His name. In that name the
apostles baptize, (Acts 2:38), speak and teach, (Acts 4:18), heal the cripple,
(Acts 3:6), and forgive sin, (Acts 10:43). This name is resisted and it is
attacked, (Acts 26:9). The confession of it brings on suffering, (Acts 5:41). It
is appealed to, (Acts 22:8) and is magnified, (Acts 19:17). In this sense the
name of Jesus Christ was a sort of compendium of the confession of the church,
the strength of its faith, and the anchor of its hope. Just as
The name of Lord, which
in the New Testament is constantly connected with that of Jesus Christ, points
in the same direction. In the gospels Jesus is addressed by the name Lord a
number of times by persons who were not of the disciples, but nevertheless call
on Him for help. In such instances the name usually carries no more force than
that of Rabbi or Master. But we also find this name often spoken by the
disciples. Further, in the gospel accounts the name of Jesus is sometimes
interchanged by Luke and John with that of Lord. And, finally, Jesus Himself
also makes use of that name, designating Himself as the Lord.
In the mouth of Jesus
Himself and of the disciples this name of the Lord takes on a much profounder
significance than is contained in the appellation Rabbi or Master. Just what
everybody who came to Jesus for help and addressed Him with the name Lord meant
by it cannot be said with certainty. But Jesus was in His own consciousness the
teacher, the master, the Lord pre-eminently, and He ascribed an authority to
Himself which went far beyond that of the scribes. So much is evident already in
such passages as Matthew 23:1-11 and Mark 1:22 and 27 where Jesus exalts Himself
as the only Master above all other. But it is much more resolutely expressed,
and is put beyond all possibility of doubt, when He calls Himself a Lord of the
Sabbath, (Matt. 12:8) and elsewhere calls Himself David’s Son and David’s Lord,
(Matt. 22:43-45). In these claims nothing less is involved than that He is the
Messiah, who is seated at the right hand of God, shares His power, and judges of
the living and the dead.
This deep significance
which attaches itself to the name of Lord is owing in part also, presumably, to
the fact that the names of Jehovah and Adonai of the Old Testament were
translated by the Greek kurios, Lord,
in the New, that is, by the same word which was also applied to the Christ. As
Christ more and more clearly explained Himself, who He was, and as the disciples
understood better and better which revelation of God had come to them in Christ,
the name of Lord took on a richer and richer significance. Texts of the Old
Testament in which God was spoken of were applied to the Christ in the New
without hesitation. Thus in Mark 1:3 the text from Isaiah, Prepare ye the way of
the Lord, make His paths straight, is referred to and applied to the preparation
by John the Baptist as its fulfillment. In Christ, God Himself, the Lord, has
come to His people. And the disciples, by confessing Jesus as Lord, have thus
more and more clearly expressed that God Himself had revealed and given Himself
to them in the person of Christ. It is Thomas who mounts to the very climax of
this confession during Jesus’ sojourn on earth when he falls at the feet of the
resurrected Christ and addresses Him with the words: My Lord and my God, (John
20:28).
After the resurrection
the name of Lord becomes the name commonly used for Jesus in the circle of His
disciples. We find it continually in the Acts and in the letters, especially the
letters of Paul. Sometimes the name Lord is used alone, but usually it goes
combined with other designations: the Lord Jesus, or the Lord Jesus Christ, or
our Lord Jesus Christ, or our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and so on. By using
this name of Lord the believers express that Jesus Christ who was humiliated to
the point of death and the cross, has by reason of His perfect obedience been
raised to Lord and Prince, (Acts 2:35; 5:31), who is seated at God’s right hand,
(Acts 2:34), who is Lord of all, (Acts 10:36): first of all the church which He
has purchased with His blood, (Acts 20:28), and further of all creation which He
will sometime judge as the Judge of living and dead, (Acts 10:42; 17:31).
Whoever, therefore, shall
call upon the name of Jesus as Christ and Lord, shall be saved, (Acts 2:21; 1
Cor. 1:2). To be Christian is to confess with the mouth and to believe with the
heart that God has raised Him up from the dead. The content of the preaching is:
Christ Jesus, the Lord, (2 Cor. 4:5). So completely is the essence of
Christianity epitomized in this confession that in the writings of Paul the name
of Lord almost comes to be used as a given name applied to Christ in His
distinction from the Father and the Spirit. As Christians we have one God, the
Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by
whom are all things, and we by Him, and one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to
every man severally as He will, (1 Cor. 8:6; 12:11). Just as the name of God in
the writings of Paul becomes the domestic name of the Father, so the name of
Lord becomes the domestic name of Christ.
The apostolic blessing,
accordingly, prays that the church may have the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, (2 Cor. 13:13). The one
name of God interprets itself in the three persons of Father, Son, and Spirit,
(Matt. 28:19).
If Christ, according to
the testimony of the apostles, occupies so high a place, it is no wonder that
all kinds of Divine attributes and works are ascribed to Him, and that even the
Divine nature is recognized in Him.
The figure we encounter
in the person of Christ on the pages of Scripture is a unique figure. On the one
hand, He is very man. He became flesh and came into the flesh, (John 1:14; 1
John 4:2-3). He bore the likeness of sinful flesh, (
Nevertheless this same
man was distinguished from all men and raised high above them. Not only was He
according to His human nature conceived by the Holy Spirit; not only was He
throughout His life, despite all temptation, free from sin; and not only was He
after His death raised up again and taken into heaven; but the same subject, the
same person, the same I who humiliated Himself so deeply that He assumed the
form of a servant and became obedient unto the death of the cross, already
existed in a different form of existence long before His incarnation and
humiliation. He existed then in the form of God and thought it no robbery to be
equal with God, (Phil. 2:6). At His resurrection and ascension He simply
received again the glory which He had with the Father before the world was,
(John 17:5). He is eternal as God Himself, having been with Him already in the
beginning, (John 1:1; 1 John 1:1). He is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and
the last, the beginning and the end, (Rev. 22:13); He is omnipresent, so that,
though walking about on the face of the earth, He is simultaneously in the bosom
of the Father in heaven, (John 1:18 and 3:13); and after His glorification He
remains with His church and fulfills all in all; He is unchangeable and faithful
and is the same yesterday, and today, and forever, (Heb. 13:8); He is
omniscient, so that He hears prayers; He is the One who knows all men’s hearts,
(Acts 1:24; unless the reference here is to the Father); He is omnipotent so
that all things are subjected unto Him and all power is given to Him in heaven
and on earth, and is the chief of all kings.
While in possession of
all these Divine attributes, He also shares in the Divine works. Together with
the Father and the Spirit He is the creator of all things, (John 1:3; Col. 1:5).
He is the firstborn, the beginning, and the Head of all creatures, (Col. 1:15;
Rev. 3:14). He upholds all things by the word of His might, so that they are not
only of Him but also continuously in Him and through Him, (Heb. 1:3; Col. 1:17).
And, above all, He preserves, reconciles, and restores all things and gathers
them into one under Himself as Head. As such He bears especially the name of the
Savior of the world. In the Old Testament the name of Savior or Redeemer was
given to God, but in the New Testament the Son as well as the Father bears this
name. In some places this name is given to God, and in some places it is given
to Christ. Sometimes it is not clear whether the name refers to God or to
Christ, (Titus 2:13; 2 Pet. 1:1). But it is Christ in whom and through whom the
saving work of God is wholly effected.
All this points to a
unity between Father and Son, between God and Christ, such as nowhere else
exists between the Creator and His creature. Even though Christ has assumed a
human nature which is finite and limited and which began to exist in time, as
person, as Self, Christ does not in Scripture stand on the side of the creature
but on the side of God. He partakes of God’s virtues and of His works; He
possesses the same Divine nature. This last point comes into particularly clear
expression in the three names which are given Christ: that of the Image, the
Word, and the Son of God.
Christ is the Image of
God, the brightness of God’s glory, and the express image of His person. In
Christ the invisible God has become visible. Whoever sees Him sees the Father,
(John 14:9). Whoever wants to know who God is and what He is must behold the
Christ. As Christ is, such is the Father. Further, Christ is the Word of God,
(John 1:1; Rev. 19:13). In Him the Father has perfectly expressed Himself: His
wisdom, His will, His excellences, His whole being. He has given Christ to have
life in Himself, (John 5 :26). Whoever wants to learn to know God’s thought,
God’s counsel, and God’s will for mankind and the world, let him listen to
Christ, and hear Him, (Matt. 17:5). Finally, Christ is the Son of God, the Son,
as John describes Him, often without any further qualification, (1 John 2:22ff;
Heb. 1:1, 8), the one and only-begotten, the own and beloved Son, in whom the
Father is well pleased. Whoever would be a child of God, let him accept Christ,
for all who accept Him receive the right and the power to be called the children
of God, (John 1:12).
Scripture finally places
its crown upon this testimony of Scripture by also allowing Him the Divine name.
Thomas confessed Him already before the ascension as his Lord and his God, (John
20:28). John testifies of Him that as the Word He was with God at the beginning
and Himself was God. Paul declares that He is from the fathers according to the
flesh but that according to His essence He is God above all, to be blessed
forever, (Rom. 9:5). The letter to the Hebrews states that He is exalted high
above the angels and is by God Himself addressed by the name of God, (Heb.
1:8-9). Peter speaks of Him as our God and Savior Jesus Christ, (2 Pet. 1:1). In
the baptismal mandate of Jesus as reported in Matthew 28:19, and in the
benedictions of the apostles, Christ stands on one line with the Father and the
Spirit. The name and essence, the attributes and works of the Godhead are
recognized in the Son, (and the Spirit) as well as in the Father.
Jesus the Christ, the Son
of the living God—upon this stone is the church built. From the very beginning
the wholly unique significance of Christ was clear to all believers. He was
confessed by them all as the Lord who by His teaching and life had accomplished
salvation, the forgiveness of sins, and immortality, who was thereupon raised by
the Father to His right hand, and who would soon return as Judge to judge the
living and the dead. The same names that are given Him in the letters of the
apostles are given Him also in the earliest Christian writings. By those names
He is addressed in the early prayers and songs. All were convinced that there is
one God, that they were His children, one Lord who had made sure and granted to
them the love of God, and one Spirit, who caused them all to walk in newness of
life. The baptismal mandate of Matthew 28:19, which came into general use at the
end of the apostolic period, is the evidence of this unanimity of conviction.
But the moment Christians
began to reflect on the content of this confession, all kinds of difference of
opinion became apparent. The members of the church, who were previously educated
in Jewry or heathendom and for the most part were among the untutored of the
country, were not in position immediately to appropriate the apostolic teaching
in their own minds. They lived in a society in which all kinds of ideas and
currents of thought were crisscrossing, and thus they continuously were subject
to much temptation and error. Even during the life of the apostles we notice
that various heretical teachers had forced their way into the church and tried
to wrench it from the fixity of its belief. At Colosse, for instance, there were
members who did injustice to the person and work of Christ and changed the
gospel into a new law, (Col. 2:3ff.; 16ff.). At
And so it remained in the
post-apostolic period. In fact, the errors and heresies grew in variety, force,
and distribution from the second century on. There were those who believed in
the real human nature of Christ, in His supernatural birth, His resurrection and
ascension, but who recognized the Divine in Him in nothing more than an unusual
measure of the gifts and powers of the Spirit. These were thought of as having
been given Him at His baptism in order to equip Him for His religious-moral
task. The followers of this movement lived under the influence of the deistic,
Jewish idea of the relationship of God and the world. They simply could not
conceive of a more intimate relationship between God and man than one which
consisted of a sharing of gifts and abilities. Jesus, accordingly, was indeed a
richly endowed person, a religious genius, but He was and He remained a man.
But others, brought up
formerly in heathendom, found themselves attracted rather to the polytheistic
idea. They thought that they could very well understand that Christ, according
to His inner nature, should be one of the many, or even perhaps the highest, of
all Divine beings. But they could not believe that such a Divine, pure being
could have assumed a material and fleshly nature. And so they sacrificed the
real humanity of Christ and said that it was only temporarily, and in appearance
merely, that He had gone about on earth, much as the Angels according to Old
Testament report had often done. Both thought-currents, both movements, continue
up to the present day. At one time the Divinity of Christ is sacrificed to the
humanity; at another it is the humanity that is sacrificed to the Divinity.
There are always extremes which sacrifice the idea to the fact, or the fact to
the idea. They do not comprehend the unity and harmony of the two.
But the Christian church
from the very beginning stood on a different basis and in the person of Christ
confessed the most intimate, the profoundest, and therefore the altogether
unique, communion of God and man. Its representatives in the earliest period
sometimes expressed themselves in an awkward way. They had to struggle, first to
form a somewhat clear notion of the reality, and then to give expression to this
idea in clear language. But, all the same, the church did not for that reason
let itself be pushed off its base. Rather, the church avoided the one and the
other extreme and clung to the teaching of the apostles concerning the person of
Christ.
However, when one and the
same person shares in the Divine nature and also is very man, it follows that an
effort at definition must be made, and at a sharp delineation of how that person
is related both to the Deity and to the world. And when this effort was made, a
path of error and heresy defined itself again to the right and to the left.
When, in
other words, the unity of God—which is a fundamental truth of Christianity—was
understood in such a way that the being of God was perfectly coterminous [contiguous]
and coincident with the person of the Father, then there remained no room in the
Godhead for the Christ. Christ then was pushed outside the pale of deity, and
placed alongside of man, for between the Creator and the creature there is no
gradual transition. One could then go on to say with Arius that in time and
status He transcended the whole world, that He was the first among created
creatures, and that He was superior to them all in position and in honor. But
Christ thus remains a creature. There was a time when He did not exist, and it
is in time that He, like every other creature, was called into existence by God.
In the attempt, however,
to hold to the unity of God and at the same time to grant the person of Christ
the place of, honor proper to Him, it is easy to fail into another error, the
error named after its foremost proponent, Sabellius. While Arius, so to speak,
identified the being of the Godhead with the person of the Father, Sabellius
sacrificed all three of the persons to the being of the Godhead. According to
His teaching, the three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, are not eternal
realities, contained in the being of the Godhead, but they are forms and
manifestations in which the one Divine Being manifests Himself successively in
the course of the centuries: namely, in the Old Testament, in the earthly
sojourn of Christ, and after Pentecost. Both heresies have throughout the
centuries found their adherents. The so-called Groningen Theologie, for
instance, renewed essentially the doctrine of Arius, and Modern Theology at
first walked in the way of Sabellius.
It required much prayer
and much struggle for the church to take the right way through all these
heresies, the more so because each of them was modified and mingled with all
sorts of departures and variations. But under the leadership of great men,
eminent by reason of their piety as well as their power of thought, and
therefore justly called fathers of the church, that church remained faithful to
the teaching of the apostles. At the Synod of Nicea in 325 the church confessed
its faith in the one God, the Father, the Almighty, creator of all things
visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was
begotten by the Father as the only-begotten, that is, out of the being of God,
God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of
one substance with the Father, by whom all things in heaven and earth were made,
and in the Holy Spirit.
Very significant as this
Nicean result was it by no means put a stop to the doctrinal disputes. On the
contrary, the confession of Nicea gave opportunity for new questions and
different answers. For, although the relationship of Christ to the being of God
and to the world of men was now determined in the sense that in His person He
shared in both, and that He was in His own person both God and man, the question
would not down as to the nature of that relationship between those two natures
in one person. In the answer to that question, too, various ways were taken.
Nestorius concluded that
if there were two natures in Christ, there also had to be two persons, two
selves, which could only be made one by some moral tie such as that which
obtains in the marriage of a man and a woman. And Eutyches, proceeding from a
like identification of person and nature, came to the conclusion that if in
Christ there was but one person, one self, present, then the two natures had to
be so mingled and welded together that only one nature, a Divine-human one,
would emerge from the blending. In Nestorius the distinction of the natures was
maintained at the cost of the unity of the person; in Eutyches the unity of the
person was maintained at the cost of the duality of the natures.
After a long and vehement
struggle, however, the church got beyond these disputes. At the Council of
Chalcedon in 451 it stated that the one person of Christ consisted of two
natures, unchanged and unmingled, (against Eutyches), and not separated nor
divided, (against Nestorius), and that these natures existed alongside of each
other, haying their unity in the one person. With this decision which, later, at
the Synod of Constantinople in 680 was amplified and completed on one specific
point, the century-long struggle about the person of Christ came to an end. In
these disputes the church had preserved the essence of Christianity, the
absolute character of the Christian religion, and thus also its own
independence.
It is of course
self-evident that this confession of Nicea and
But, understood in this
way, the confession which the church fixed at Nicea and
In modern times, for
instance, there are many who think of the Doctrine of Two Natures as the acme of
unreasonableness and who in their minds form an entirely different picture of
the person of Christ. They cannot deny that there is something in Christ which
differentiates Him from all men and raises Him above them all. But this Divine
element which they recognize in Christ they regard not as a partaking of the
Divine nature itself, but as a Divine endowment or strength granted to Christ in
a particularly high degree. They tend to say, accordingly, that there are two
sides to Christ, a Divine and a human side; or that He can be looked at from two
points of view; or that He lived in two successive states, that of humiliation
and that of exaltation; or that He, although human, by His preaching of the Word
of God and the founding of His kingdom, nevertheless was the extraordinary and
perfect vehicle of God’s revelation and so has obtained for us the value of God.
But any unprejudiced reader will feel that these representations are simply so
many modifications in the language of the church not merely, but also that they
make something of the person of Christ other than that which the church at all
times on the basis of the testimony of the apostles has confessed.
After all, Divine gifts
and powers are in a certain sense given to everyone, for all good and perfect
gifts come down from the Father of lights. And even the unusual gifts, such as
were the portion of the prophets, for example, do not raise these prophets above
the plane of human beings. Prophets and apostles were men of like passions as we
have. If Christ therefore received no more than extraordinary gifts and powers,
He was no more than a human being, and then there can be no such thing as an
incarnation of the Word in Him. But then He cannot, as others nevertheless
maintain, by virtue of His resurrection and ascension be raised to the being of
God, or have obtained the value or worth of God for us. The separation between
God and man is not a gradual difference but a deep gulf. The relationship is
that of Creator and creature, and the creature from the nature of his being can
never become Creator, nor have the significance and worth for us human beings of
the Creator, on whom we are absolutely dependent.
It is remarkable,
therefore, that some in modern times, after having compared all these newer
representations concerning the person of Christ with the teaching of the church
and of Scripture, have come to the honest conclusion that in the last analysis
the doctrine of the church does most justice to the doctrine of Scripture. The
teaching that Christ was God and man in one person is not a product of heathen
philosophy but is based on the apostolic witness.
This certainly is the
mystery of salvation that He who was Himself with God in the beginning and was
God, (John 1:1), who was in the form of God and did not think it robbery to be
equal with God, (Phil. 2:6), who was the brightness of God’s glory and the
express image of His person, (Heb. 1:3), in the fulness of time became flesh,
(John 1:14), was born of a woman, (Gal. 4:4), humbled Himself, having taken on
the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, (Phil. 2:7).
Christ was God, and is
God, and will forever remain God. He was not the Father, nor the Spirit, but the
Son, the own, only-begotten, beloved Son of the Father. And it was not the
Divine being, neither the Father nor the Spirit, but the person of the Son who
became man in the fulness of time. And when He became man and as man went about
on earth, even when He agonized in
The incarnation therefore
also implies in the second place that He who remained what He was also became
what He was not. He became this at a point in time, at a particular moment in
history, at that hour when the Holy Spirit came over Mary and the power of the
Most High overshadowed her, (Luke 1:35). But all the same this incarnation was
prepared for during the centuries.
If we are to understand
the incarnation aright, we can say that the generation of the Son and the
creation of the world were preparatory to the incarnation of the Word. This is
not at all to say that the generation and the creation already contain the
incarnation. For Scripture always relates the incarnation of the Son to the
redemption from sin and the accomplishment of salvation. But the generation and
creation, especially also the creation of man in the image of God, both teach
that God is sharable, in an absolute sense within, and in a relative sense out
side of, the Divine being. If this were not the case, there would not be any
possibility of an incarnation of God. Whoever thinks the incarnation of God
impossible in principle also denies the creation of the world and the generation
of the Son. And whoever acknowledges the creation and generation can have no
objection in principle to the incarnation of God in human nature.
More directly the
incarnation of the Word was prepared for in the revelation which began
immediately after the fall, continued in
Since the Son of God, who
took on human nature in Mary, had existed before that time, and from eternity,
as the person of the Son, His conception in Mary’s womb did not take place
through the will of the flesh nor the will of the man, but by the overshadowing
of the Holy Spirit. It is true that the incarnation is linked with the preceding
revelation and completes it, but it is not itself a product of nature or of
humanity. It is a work of God, a revelation, the highest revelation. Just as it
was the Father who sent His Son into the world, and the Holy Spirit who
overshadowed Mary, so it was the Son Himself who took of our flesh and blood,
(Heb. 2:14). The incarnation was His own work; He was not passive in regard to
it. He became flesh by His own will and His own deed. Therefore He sets aside
the will of the flesh and the will of the man, and prepares a human nature for
Himself in Mary’s womb through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.
That human nature did not
exist beforehand. It was not brought down with Christ from heaven and borne into
Mary from the outside and, so to speak, conducted through her body. The
Anabaptists teach this in order to hold to the sinlessness of the human nature
in Christ. But in taking this stand, they are following in the example of the
ancient Gnosticism, and proceed from the idea that flesh and matter are in them
selves sinful. But in the incarnation, also, Scripture holds to the goodness of
creation and to the Divine origin of matter.
Christ took His human
nature from Mary. So far as the flesh is concerned, He is from David and the
fathers. Therefore this nature in Him is a true and perfect human nature, like
ours in all things, sin excepted. Nothing human was strange to Christ. The
denial of the coming of Christ in the flesh is the beginning of the antichrist,
(1 John 2:22).
Just as the human nature
of Christ did not exist before the conception in Mary, so it did not exist for
sometime before, nor for some time after, in a state of separation from Christ.
The seed conceived in Mary, and the child that was born of her, did not first
grow up independently into a man, into a person, a self, in order then to be
assumed by the Christ and united with Himself. This heresy, too, had its
supporters in earlier and later times, but Scripture knows nothing of it. That
holy thing which was conceived in Mary’s womb was from the beginning the Son of
God and from the beginning He bore that name, (Luke 1:35). The Word did not
later take a human being unto Himself, but became flesh, (John 1:14). And
therefore the Christian church in its confession said that the person of the Son
did not assume a human person but a human nature, rather. Only in that way can
the duality of the natures and the unity of the person be maintained.
For, and this is the
third point which requires our attention in this matter—even though Scripture
states as plainly as possible that Christ was the Word and that He became flesh,
that according to the flesh He was from the fathers but that according to His
essence Re is God over all, blessed forever, still in that Christ it always
presents one person to us. It is always the same Self that speaks and acts in
Christ. The child which is born bears the name of the mighty God, the
everlasting Father, (Isa. 9:6). David’s Son is at the same time David’s Lord.
The same one who came down is the one who ascended up far above all heavens,
(Eph. 4:10). He who according to the flesh is from the fathers is according to
His essence God over all, blessed forever, (Rom.9:5). Though going about on
earth He was and He remained in heaven, in the bosom of the Father, (John 1:18;
3:13). Born in time and living in time He nevertheless is before Abraham, (John
8:58). The fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Him, (Col. 2:9).
In short, to one and the
same subject, one and the same person, Divine and human attributes and works,
eternity and time, omnipresence and limitation, creative omnipotence and
creaturely weakness are ascribed. This being so, the union of the two natures in
Christ cannot have been that of two persons. Two persons can through love be
intimately united with each other, it is true, but they can never become one
person, one self. In fact, love implies two persons and effects only a mystical
and ethical unity. If the union of the Son of God with human nature were of this
character it could at best be distinguished in degree but not in kind from that
which unites God with His creatures, specifically with His children. But Christ
occupies a unique position. He did not unite Himself in a moral way with man,
and did not take an existing human being up into His fellowship, but He prepared
a human nature for Himself in Mary’s womb and became a human being and a
servant. just as a human being can go from one state of life to another, and can
live at the same time or in succession in two spheres of life, so, by way of
analogy, Christ, who was in the form of God, went about on earth in the form of
a servant. The union which in His incarnation came to be effected was not a
moral union between two persons, but a union of two natures in the same person.
Man and woman, no matter how intimately united in love, remain two persons. God
and man, although united by the most intimate love, remain different in essence.
But in Christ man is the same subject as the Word which in the beginning was
with God and Himself was God. This is a unique, incomparable, and unfathomable
union of God and man. And the beginning and end of all wisdom is this: And the
Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as
of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, (John 1:14).
In this union Christ in
the unity of His person commands all the attributes and powers which are proper
to both natures. Some have tried to effect a still stronger and closer union of
the two natures by teaching that the two natures, immediately at the
incarnation, were welded into one Divine-human nature, or that the Divine nature
divested itself of its characteristics and condescended to the limitation of
human nature, or that the human nature lost its properties and received those of
the Divine nature, (be it all of them, or just some of them such as
omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, and quickening power.) But the Reformed
confession has always repudiated and attacked such a welding of two natures into
one and such a communication of the properties of the one nature to the other.
It was a view of the two natures which resulted in a mingling and confusion of
them and so in a pantheistic denial of the difference in essence between God and
man, Creator and creature.
True, there is an
intimate relationship between the two natures and their properties and powers.
But it is a relationship which comes into being in the unity of the person. A
stronger, deeper, more intimate union is inconceivable. Just as—to make a
comparison and not an equating of the two—soul and body are united in one person
and nevertheless remain distinguished from each other in essence and properties,
so in Christ the same person is the subject of both natures. The difference
between soul and body is the assumption and condition of the inner union of the
two in one and the same human being, and so too the difference between the
Divine and the human nature is the condition and basis of their union in Christ.
The welding of the two natures into one and the communication of the properties
from one to another make for no more intimate relationship, but make for a
mingling or fusion, and, in point of fact, impoverish the fulness which is in
Christ. They subtract either from the Divine, or from the human, nature, or from
both natures, and weaken the word of the Scripture that in Him, that is, in
Christ, the fulness of the Godhead bodily dwells, (Col. 2:9; 1:19). That fulness
is maintained only if both natures are distinguished from each other,
communicating their properties and attributes not to each other, but placing
them, rather, in the service of the one person. So it is always the same rich
Christ who in His humiliation and exaltation commands the properties and powers
of both natures and who precisely by that means can bring those works to pass,
which, as the works of the Mediator, are distinguished on the one hand from the
works of God and on the other hand from the works of man, and which take a
unique place in the history of the world.
By this Doctrine of the
Two Natures one has the advantage that everything which Scripture says of the
person of Christ and everything it ascribes to Him comes into its own. On the
one hand He then is and remains the one and eternal Son of God, who with the
Father and the Spirit has made all things, sustains and governs them, and who
therefore may remain the object of our worship. He was such an object already in
the days of the apostles, even as He was then, and now yet is, the object of the
faith and confidence of all His disciples. But He cannot and He may not be both
of these things unless He is true God, for it is written: Thou shalt worship the
Lord Thy God and Him only shalt thou serve, (Matt. 4:10). The basis for the
religious worship of Christ can be only His Divine nature, so that whoever
denies this and yet maintains the worship becomes guilty of deifying the
creature and of idolatry. The Divinity of Christ is not an abstract doctrine but
something which is of the highest importance for the life of the church.
On the other hand, the
Christ became very man and perfect man, like us in all things, sin excepted. He
was infant, child, youth, and man, and He grew in wisdom and in favor with God
and man, (Luke 2:40, 52). All this is not appearance and illusion merely, as
those must say who hold that the Divine properties belong to the human nature,
but it is the full truth. There was in Christ a gradual development, a
progressive growth in body, in the powers of the soul, in favor with God and
man. The gifts of the Spirit were not given to Him all at once, but successively
in ever greater measure. There were things which He had to learn, and which at
first He did not know, (Mark 13:32; Acts 1:7). Even though He was in possession
of the not-able-to-sin state of being, there was in Him, because of His weak
human nature, the possibility of being tempted and of suffering and dying. So
long as He was on the earth He was not according to His human nature in heaven,
and hence He too did not live by sight but by faith. He fought and He suffered,
and in all this He clung fixedly to the word and the promise of God. Thus He
learned obedience from the things which He suffered, continually established
Himself in obedience, and so sanctified Himself. And in this at the same time He
left us an example, and became the author of eternal salvation unto all them
that obey Him, (Heb. 5:9).
