Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (881 page)

In passing through the successive stages of the work of redemption, Christ with his person endowed with two natures, experienced, according to the expression of the dogmatical theologians, founded on Phil. ii. 6 ff.,
two states,
statum exinanitionis,
and
statum exaltationis.
His human nature in its union with the divine, participated from the moment of conception in divine properties : but as during his earthly life Jesus made no continuous use of them, that life to the time of his death and burial, is regarded as a state of humiliation: whereas, with the resurrection, or even with the descent into hell, commenced the state of exaltation which was consummated by the
sessio ad dextram patris.

As to the work of Christ, the doctrine of our Church attributes to him a triple office. As prophet, he has revealed to man the highest truth, the divine decree of redemption, confirming his testimony by miracles; and he still unceasingly controls the announcement of this truth. As high priest, he has, on the one hand, by his irreproachable life, fulfilled the law in our stead
(obedientia activa);
on the other, he has borne, in his sufferings and death, the punishment which impended over us
(obedientia passiva),
and now perpetually intercedes for us with the Father. Lastly, as king, he governs the world, and more particularly the Church, which he will lead from the conflicts of earth to the glory of heaven, completing its destiny by the general resurrection and the last judgment.

§ 146. OBJECTIONS TO THE CHRISTOLOGY OF THE CHURCH.

The Reformed Church did not go thus far with the Lutherans in their doctrine of the person of Christ, for they did not admit the last and boldest consequence drawn by the latter from the union of the manhood and God-head — the
communicatia idiomatum,
or communication of properties. The Lutherans themselves did not hold that the properties of the human nature were communicated to the divine, nor that all the properties of the divine nature, eternity for example, could be communicated to the human ;
^*
and this gave occasion on the part of the Reformed Church, to the following objection: the communication of properties must be reciprocal and complete, or it is none at all; moreover, by the communication of the properties of an infinite nature to a finite one, the latter is not less annihilated as to its essence than an infinite nature would be, were it to receive the properties of a finite one.
^†
When the Lutherans sought shelter in the position, that the properties of the one nature were only so far shared by the other, as according to its character is possible,
uti per suam indolem potest,
^‡
they in fact did away altogether with the
communicatio idiomatum;
and indeed this doctrine has been explicitly given up even by orthodox theologians since Reinhard.

But the simple root of this complicated exchange of properties, the union of the divine and human natures in one person, has also met with contradiction.

The Socinians denied it on the ground that two natures, each of which alone constitutes a person, cannot be united to form a single person, especially when they possess properties so opposite, as where the one is immortal, the other mortal, the one uncreated, the other created;
^§
and the Rationalists

* See the Oratio appended to the locus de pers. et offic. Chr. Gerhard, ut sup. p. 719 ff.

† Vid, Gerhard, II. th. 1
,
p. 685 ff
.
; Marheineke, Instit. symb. § 71 f.

‡ Reinhard, Vorles. über die Dogm. s
.
354, conformably to the proposition urged by the Reformed against the Lutherans:
Nulla natura in se ipsam recipit contradictoria,
Planck, Gesch. des protest.
Lehrbegriifs, Bd. 6, s
.
782.

§ Fausti Socini de Christi natura disputatio. Opp. Bibi.
Fr. Pol. 1, p. 784; Catech. Racov. Q. 96 ff. Comp. Marheineke, Instit. symb. § 96. Spinoza, also, ep. 21,
ad Oldenburg, Opp. ed. Gfrörer, p.
556, says:
Quod quædam ecclesiæ his adduut, quod Deus naturam humanarn assumpserit, monui expresse, me, quid dicant, nescire; imo, ut verum fatear, non minus absurde mihi loqui videntur, quam si quis mihi diceret, quad circulus naturam quadrati induerit.
agree with them, insisting more particularly that the formulæ of the Church, in which the above union is defined, are almost entirely negative, thus presenting no conception to the mind, and that in a Christ, who by the aid of a divine nature dwelling within him, withstood evil and kept himself from sin, the man who is destitute of such aid can have no true example.
^*

The essential and tenable points of the rationalistic objections to this doctrine, have been the most acutely perceived and arranged by Schleiermacher, who, on this subject as on many others, has brought the negative criticism of the dogmas of the Church to completeness.
^†
Before all else he finds it a difficulty, that by the expression,
divine nature
and
human nature,
divinity and humanity are placed under one category, and what is more, under the category of nature, which essentially denotes only a limited being, conceived by means of its opposite. Further, while ordinarily one nature is common to many individuals or persons, here one person is supposed to partake of two different natures. Now if by person be meant the permanent conscious unity of a living being, and by nature, the sum of the laws which govern the conditions of life in that being: it is not to be conceived, how two opposite systems of conditions can have but one centre. The absurdity of this doctrine becomes, according to Schleiermacher, especially evident in the supposition of two wills in Christ, since, for consistency, two wills must be associated with two understandings, and as the understanding and will constitute the personality, Christ would on this supposition be inevitably divided into two persons. It is true that the two wills are supposed always to will in unison : but, on the one hand, there results from this only a moral, not a personal unity; on the other hand, this unison of wills is not possible in relation to the divine and the human will, since the latter, which from its very essence can only exercise itself on particulars as they present themselves in succession, can as little will the same with the former, whose object is the whole in its development, as the human understanding, which acts by reasoning, can think the same with the divine understanding, which acts intuitively. Hence it evidently follows also that a communication of properties between the two natures is not to be admitted.

The doctrine of the work of Christ did not escape a similar criticism. Passing over what has been objected in point of form to the division of this work into three offices, the ideas of revelation and miracles, under the head of the prophetic office, were chiefly called in question. It was argued that these ideas agreed neither

* (Röhr) Briefe über den Rationalismus, S. 378 ff. ; Wegscheider Inst. theol. § 128; Bretschneider, Handb. der Dogm. 2, § 137 ff.; also Kant, Relig. innerhaib der Gränzen der blossen Vernunft. 2tes St. 2ter Absch. b.

† Glaubenslehre,
2,
§§ 96 — 98.objectively with just conceptions of God and the world in their reciprocal relation, nor subjectively with the laws of the human intellect; that the perfect God could not have created a world which from time to time needed the extraordinary interposition of the Creator, nor more particularly a human nature which was incapable of attaining its destination by the development of its innate faculties; that the immutable Being could not operate on the world first in this manner, then in that, at one time mediately, at another immediately, but that he must always have operated on it in the same manner, namely, in himself and on the whole immediately, but for us and on individuals mediately; that to admit an interruption of the order of nature, and of the development of humanity, would be to renounce all rational thought, while, in the particular case in question, a revelation or miracle is not confidently to be recognized as such, since, in order to be sure that certain results have not proceeded from the powers of nature and the faculties of the human mind, a perfect knowledge of the resources of both would be requisite, and of such a knowledge man is not possessed.
^*

But the main difficulty lay in the office of high priest, attributed to Jesus — in the doctrine of the atonement. That which especially drew forth objections was the human aspect which in Anselm’s system was given to the relation of God to the Son of man. As it well becomes man to forgive offences without exacting vengeance, so, thought Socinus, might God forgive the offences committed against him by men, without satisfaction.
^†
To meet this objection Hugo Grotius argued, that not as in consequence of personal injuries, but to maintain the order of the moral world inviolable, or in virtue of his
justitia rectoria,
God cannot forgive sins without satisfaction.
^‡
Nevertheless, granting the necessity for satisfaction, it did not appear to be met by the death of Jesus. While Anselm, and still more decidedly Thomas Aquinas,
^§
spoke of a
satisfactio superabundans,
Socinus denied that Christ had even borne as much punishment as men have deserved; for every individual man having deserved eternal death, consequently, as many substitutes as sinners ought to have suffered eternal death ; whereas in this case, the single Christ has suffered merely temporal death, and that as an introduction to the highest glory; nor did this death attach to his divine nature, so that it might be said to have infinite value, but only to his human nature. On the other hand, Duns Scotus,
^||
in opposition to Thomas, and subsequently Grotius and the Arminians (equi-distant from orthodoxy and Socinianism), adopted the expedient of maintaining, that the merit of Christ was indeed in itself finite like its subject, his human nature, and hence was inadequate

* Spinoza, tract. theol. polit. c. vi. p. 533. ed. Gfrörer, and ep. 23, ad Oldenburg. p. 558 f. Briefe über den Rat., 4ter, 5ter, 6ter, 12ter. Wegscheider, §§ 11, 12. Schleiermacher, §§ 14. 47.

† Proelect. theol. c. xv.

‡ In the work: defensio fidei cath. de satisfactione Chr. adv. F. Socinum.

§ Summa, P. 3, Q
.
48, A. 2

|| Comm. in Sentt. L. 3, Dist. 19.as a satisfaction for the sins of the world; but that God accepted it as adequate out of his free grace. But from the admission that God can content himself with an inadequate satisfaction, and thus can forgive a part of the guilt without satisfaction, it follows necessarily, that he must also be able thus to forgive the whole. Besides these more precise definitions, however,, the fundamental idea of the whole fabric, namely, that one individual can take upon himself the punishment due to the sins of another, has been attacked as an ignorant transference of the conditions of a lower order of relation to a higher. Moral transgressions, it has been said, are not transmissible obligations; it is not with them as with debts of money, which it is immaterial to the creditor who pays, provided they are paid; rather it is essential to the punishment of sin, that it should fall on the guilty only.
^*
If, according to this, the so-called passive obedience of Christ cannot have been vicarious, still less can his active obedience have been so, since as man he was bound to render this on his own behalf.
^†

In relation to the kingly office of Christ, the hope of his second advent to judge the world lost ground in the sentiment of the Church, in proportion as the opinion obtained, that every individual enters on a state of complete retribution immediately after death, for this opinion made the general judgment appear superfluous.
^‡

§ 147. THE CHRISTOLOGY OF RATIONALISM.

The Rationalists, rejecting the doctrine of the Church concerning Christ, his person, and his work, as self-contradictory, useless, nay, even hurtful to the true morality of the religious sentiment, propounded in its stead a system which, while it avoided all contradictions, yet in a certain sense retained for Jesus the character of a divine manifestation, which even, rightly considered, placed him far higher, and moreover embodied the strongest motives to practical piety.
^§

According to them, Jesus was still a divine messenger, a special favourite and charge of the Deity, inasmuch as, furnished by the disposition of Providence with an extraordinary measure of spiritual endowment, he was born in an age and nation, and guided in a career, the most favourable to his development into that for which he was destined; and, especially, inasmuch as he was subjected to a species of death that rendered possible his apparent resurrection, on wlìich depended the success of his entire work, and was encompassed by a series of circumstances which actually brought that resurrection to pass. The Rationalists hold that their idea of the

* See, besides Socinus, Kant, Relig. innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, 2tes Stück, 1ter Abschn., c.

† Töllner, Der thätige Gehorsam Christi untersucht. 1768.