THE CROWNED
CHRIST
CHAPTER IV
His Human Spirit and Soul
We come now to consider the deeper question of spirit and
soul in Christ. "Docetism," which denied the reality of His flesh, needs now no
argument to be spent upon it, for it has no adherents at the present time; but
that to which we are now come involves, to begin with, the question of what
spirit and soul are in man; and many are not yet clear as to this. We can
hardly therefore understand what true humanity involves in the Lord, except we
first understand what it is in men at large.
If, for instance, we take up
such a book as "Hodges Outlines of Theology," (a book which has been
praised by a justly celebrated man, lately deceased, as a "Goliaths sword
- none like it" for the Christian armoury,) we shall find the writer saying: -
"Pythagoras, and after him Plato, and subsequently the mass of Greek and
Roman philosophers, maintained that man consists of three constituent elements:
the rational spirit, (nous, pneuma, mens;) the animal soul, (psuche, anima;)
the body, (soma, corpus.) Hence this usage of the word became stamped upon the
Greek popular speech. And consequently the apostle uses all three when
intending to express exhaustively in popular language the totality of man and
his belongings: I pray God that your whole spirit and soul and body be
preserved blameless (1 Thes. v. 23; Heb. iv. 12; 1 Cor. xv. 45). Hence
some theologians conclude that it is a doctrine given by divine inspiration
that human nature is constituted of three distinct elements."
To which view
he objects:- "That pneuma and psuche are distinct entities cannot be the
doctrine of the New Testament, because they are habitually used interchangeably
and often indifferently. Thus psuche as well as pneuma is used to designate the
soul as the seat of the higher intellectual faculties -(Matt. xvi. 26; 1 Pet.
i. 22, Matt. x. 28). Thus also pneuma as well as psuche is used to designate
the soul as the animating principle of the body - (James ii. 26). Deceased
persons are indifferently called psuchai, (Acts ii. 27, 31; Rev. vi. 9; xx. 4);
and pneumata, (Luke xxiv. 37,39; Heb. xii. 23)."
These are all his
objections, and at the first glance they are very unsatisfactory. How much of
the precision and trustworthiness of Scripture must disappear if we are at
liberty to credit apparent distinctions of this sort to popular phraseology! On
the contrary, the Old Testament is as clear as to these distinctions as the
New, long before philosophy had moulded the speech of Greece, and outside
altogether the Greek that it had moulded.
All through Scripture, from
the first chapter of Genesis on, the beast is credited with a "soul."
"Everything wherein there was a living soul is the designation (Gen. i.
3o) of the mere animal as distinct from man. True, man also is made a living
soul; but that is not his highest - his special character. God is the "Father
of spirits" (Heb. xii. 9), not of souls; and as the son is in the image of his
father, man is thus by a special work created in the image of God (Gen. i. 27).
Thus also it is the "spirit of man that is in him" that "knoweth the things of
a man" (1 Cor. ii. 11); and this spirit is therefore never ascribed to the
beast. The writer of Ecclesiastes in his early "thoughts" raises a question
about it, but which he answers at the close (iii. 21; xii. 7), and it is merely
the doubt of a man in a fog, not divine truth, as is evident, nor given as
that.
The spirit and soul are always viewed in Scripture with perfect
consistency in this manner. Scripture is always self consistent, and never
loose in what it says. The faculties proper to man, the mental and moral
judgment are ascribed to the spirit; the sensitive instinctive, emotional
nature is ascribed to the soul. Yet there is a knowledge that can be ascribed
to the soul, as there is a joy of the spirit; and if "heart" be substituted for
"soul," and "mind" for "spirit" we can understand this without realizing any
confusion or inconsistency in the matter.
As to the death-state, if
spirit or soul be absent the body will be dead, and either may be mentioned in
this way; yet here, too, Scripture will be found perfectly at one in all its
statements. In the body, (and through its connection with it, doubtless, in the
"natural" or "psychic" condition already spoken of) man - though he has a
spirit - is a "soul;" so that "soul" becomes, as in our common language also,
the equivalent of self; while out of the body, though he has a soul, he is a
"spirit."
This will explain all passages, except perhaps those in
Revelation, where also that in chapter xx. 4 is only a somewhat emphatic use of
soul for self or person; while the "souls under the altar," as applied to
martyrs, are but figured as persons whose lives had been offered up in
sacrifice. The usage is not really different.
"Spirit and soul and
body," then, make up the man; and here the spirit it is that is the distinctive
peculiarity of man, as is evident. To be true Man the Lord would surely possess
both these; and both are accordingly ascribed to Him in Scripture. He can speak
of His soul being troubled and sorrowful (Matt. xxvi. 38; Mark xiv. 34; John
xii. 27); and it can be said of Him, that "His soul was not left in hell" (or
hades), (Acts ii. 31). On the other hand, in His youth He waxes strong in
spirit (Luke ii. 40); He perceives in His spirit (Mark ii. 8); He rejoices and
is troubled in spirit (Luke x. 21; John xiii. 21); He commends and gives up His
spirit to His Father (Luke xxiii. 46; John xix. 30).
Thus the proof of
His true humanity is complete. Here too He is in all things made like unto His
brethren; and how much, in fact, depends upon this! That, we must seek to get
before us later on; but first, we must turn to certain denials or explanations
otherwise of what these texts seem to teach; old speculations having been
revived of late, and calling for fresh examination. It will be of use to trace
it first in its older form and then in its modern phases. The older form is
known (in Church history only) as Apollinarianism; the later is all around us
to-day in what is known as Kenoticism.
Apollinaris was a man in high
esteem among the orthodox, and in opposition to Arianism a zealous Trinitarian.
It was, in fact, in opposition to Arianism that his views seem to have been
developed. "The Arian doctrine of the person of Christ," says Dr. Bruce,* "was
that in the historical person called Christ appeared in human flesh the very
exalted - in a sense , - divine - creature named in Scripture the Logos [or
Word] , - the Logos taking the place of a human soul, and being liable to human
infirmity, and even to sin, inasmuch as, however exalted, he was still a
creature, therefore finite, therefore fallible, capable of turning, in the
abuse of freedom, from good to evil. Apollinaris accepted the Arian method of
constructing [conceiving?] the person, by the exclusion of a rational human
soul, and used it as a means of obviating the Arian conclusion."
* "The
Humiliation Christ," pp. 42, 43.
He did not deny a human soul in Christ
in the scriptural sense of soul, but a rational human soul, which was the
philosophic term for which Scripture uses the term "spirit." The spirit of
Christ he maintained to be His Deity; and in this way he thought not merely to
escape the Arian doctrine of moral frailty in the Lord, but to obtain other
results of the greatest importance.
Of these the first was the
avoidance of all possibility of supposing a dual personality in Christ, such as
in fact some of his opponents fell into. Quoting Dr. Bruce again: In his view
"Christ was true God, for He was the eternal Logos manifested in the flesh. He
was also true man, for human nature consists of three component elements, body,
animal soul, and spirit;" and all these Christ had. "True, it might be objected
that the third element in the person of Christ, the nous [mind] was not human
but divine. But Apollinaris was ready with his reply. The mind in
Christ, he said in effect, is at once divine and human; the Logos
is at once the express image of God and the prototype of humanity. This
appears to be what he meant when he asserted that the humanity of Christ was
eternal, - a part of his system which was much misunderstood by his opponents,
who supposed it to have reference to the body of Christ. There is no reason to
believe that Apollinaris meant to teach that our Lords flesh was eternal,
and that He brought it with Him from heaven, and therefore was not really born
of the Virgin Mary; though some of his adherents may have held such opinions.
His idea was that Christ was the celestial man; celestial, because divine; man,
not merely as God incarnate, but because the divine spirit is at the same time
essentially human."
"This, Bruce remarks, "was the speculative
element in the Apollinarian theory misapprehended by contemporaries, better
understood, and in some quarters more sympathized with, now." And here is our
interest in all this matter, that in the ferment of mens minds at the
present time so much of the dead and buried past is being revived; oftentimes
in fragments which it is useful to put in their place therefore again, that we
may see their natural connection, and realize their significance.
But
Apollinaris would have urged, no doubt, that this last part of his view was not
simply speculation. He might have appealed to John iii. 13, "the Son of man
which is in heaven," or better still to 1 Cor. xv. 47 "the second Man is (ex
ouranou) out of heaven.*"
* So the editors read it now.
Nevertheless, "made in all things like unto His brethren" could not be
said, as is manifest, of Christ as he has pictured Him, except we admit a
self-emptying so great as that this divine humanity shall be able to take the
true human limitation, be tempted as we are, increase in wisdom as in stature,
be the new Adam, Head of a new race of men: without this it is plain we have
not the Christ of the Scriptures. He is so unlike us that we would not have
courage to claim Him for ourselves. Nor can we think of Him as in the agony of
the garden, or in the darkness of the forsaken sorrow upon the Cross. The whole
mental and moral nature of man, Apollinaris rightly conceived to be in that
spirit of man, which he denied the Lord to possess. Spirit, He had brought
(according to this theory) from heaven with Him; or rather this was the very
One who came. Thus it became now indeed "the spirit of a Man"; but a human
spirit it could not be called, except by an argument which leaps over an
infinite difference as if it scarcely were one, while in the interests of the
theory, (that is to provide against the mutability of the creature,) it is
appraised at its full worth.
But there was a third advantage that
Apollinaris conceived to arise from this divine humanity of Christ, that it
made God Himself to stoop to suffering and death, as no other view did, and
this he believed to be essentially necessary to give power to His redemptive
work. But the view he took of this is in contention.
On the whole,
there can be no right question that Apollinarianism, though it had long
disappeared, and only for a short time indeed maintained itself, was none the
less a step towards Kenoticism, which has of late been spreading in many
quarters, and which was needed to round out the elder doctrine to any
consistency. An American writer of this school even "founds his theory on the
basis of the essential unity of the human and divine"; "the incarnation,
according to him, being the human element (the Logos) eternally in God,
becoming man by taking flesh, and occupying the place of a soul." (Bruce.)
Of Kenoticism, in connection with our present theme, a very slight notice
will suffice. Its main position is that the Son of God, in becoming man,
contracted Himself really within human limitations so as either actually to
become the human spirit of Christ, or else to take place along side of this in
one human consciousness. Always the aim is, as with Apollinarianism, to escape
the attribution to the Lord of dual personality, to make the Christ of the
Gospels more simply intelligible, while conserving His actual Deity. Deity can,
they say, without real self-impairment, lay aside what belongs to it except
essential attributes; and omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence are not these,
but only expressions of free relation to the world which He has made.
"Incarnation is for the Son of God, necessarily self-limitation, self-emptying,
not indeed of that which is essential in order to be God, but of the divine
manner of existence and of the divine glory which He had from the beginning
with the Father, and which He manifested or exercised in governing the world.
Such is the view," says Thomasius as quoted by Bruce, "given by the apostle in
the epistle to the Philippians, such the view demanded by the evangelic
history; for on no other view is it possible to conceive how, for example,
Christ could sleep in the storm on the sea of Galilee. What real sleep could
there be for Him, who, as God, not only was awake, but, on the anti-Kenotic
hypothesis, as Ruler of the world, brought on, as well as, stilled the storm?"
The writer quoted here does not go the extreme length of Gess and
others, who reproduce the Apollinarian view of the Lords humanity; but we
need not cite more to show from what questionings Kenoticism has arisen, or the
answer which essentially all forms of it supply. Who does not know these
questions? and does not know also how we are baffled by them? Is this
difficulty after all capable of satisfactory solution? or does it show us that
we are face to face with the inscrutable, only affirming to us the Lords
own declaration that "no man knoweth the Son, but the Father"?
It must
give us pause, at least, to realize how truly hypothetical all the answers are
, - how little Scripture can be even pleaded in their behalf: and here surely
is the very subject upon which we should fear to hazard a word without the
safe-guard of Scripture. We may, however look at what is advanced, if only with
the conviction that the feebleness of all our thoughts is what will be
demonstrated by it. Even this may have its good also in keeping us within the
limits of trustworthy knowledge, that with the psalmist we may not exercise
ourselves on things too high for us, and incur the sure penalty that follows
presumption.
Kenosis is indeed a word taken from Scripture: it is the
"self-emptying" of the second chapter of Philippians, the real force of the
word which in our common version is poorly rendered, "He made Himself of no
reputation" (heauton ekenosen). It thus professes to be based upon Scripture -
indeed to be the only adequate interpretation, as we have seen, of the passage
referred to: a wonderful passage indeed, with which we cannot do better than
refresh our memories and our hearts. Wonderful it is that it is an exhortation
for us to the imitation of Christ in it: -
"Let this mind be in you which
was also in Christ Jesus; who, being in the form of God, did not esteem it a
thing to be grasped at, the being equal to God, but emptied Himself, taking the
form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of men; and, being found in fashion
as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of
the cross.
The alteration from "thought it not robbery" to "esteemed it
not a thing to be grasped at" is in accordance with the alternative in the
margin of the Revised Version and with what is preferred by many at the present
day. The point evidently that the apostle insists on is, not that Christ could
claim to be equal with God, but that He did not hold fast that claim: He
emptied Himself - gave up the form of God for a servants form. The point
that the Kenotic theory invites us to consider is what is involved in this
self-emptying.
The fact itself is manifest: He was here a Man, in a
servants form. He did not come in the form which was proper to Him as
God, though He was God. That is surely plain. It does not seem necessary to go
back of the simple truth with which every Christian is acquainted, to
understand this emptying. There is no fresh revelation apparent in it: rather,
it is to this general Christian knowledge that the apostle appeals.
We
are entitled to seek the full worth of these expressions: that is surely true.
He emptied Himself of the form of God to take a servants form: there is
the antithesis; but it only implies the actuality of His manhood. When in
manhood He Himself speaks of "the Son of man who is in heaven" (John iii. 13).
Was He in heaven, then, in the servants form? Nay, one could not say so.
But then the servants form which He had assumed did not limit Him to
that; the kenosis was not absolute and universal, but relative to His
appearance upon earth; it was only what was necessarily implied in His coming
into the world as Man, and not to be carried back of this. It agrees perfectly
with the passage in Philippians as an appeal founded upon the facts of
Christian knowledge, and not a new revelation for the first time communicated.
Again when the apostle assures us in Colossians (i. 19,) that "it
pleased all the fullness (of the Godhead - the whole Godhead) to dwell in him"
this is impossible to make consistent with the Kenotic view of self-contraction
within the limits of mere manhood. We may be indeed very feeble in
understanding what is meant by this, but it is not contraction at all but
expansion of our conception of Christ as Man. It is not Kenoticism, nor
consistent with it.
But, apart from Kenoticism, the Apollinarian
conception of the Lords humanity does not present a basis for a human
life capable of faith, of temptation, of sympathy with ordinary human
experience, of growth in wisdom such as is explicitly attributed to Him. The
singleness of personality which is indeed very manifest in it - and which is
its attraction to the perplexed intellect - is gained at too great a cost. We
must assert against the Apollinarian His true Manhood, and against the
Kenoticist His complete Godhead; even while we own that the connection between
these is inscrutable, and must remain so: comforting ourselves with the
assurance that that is after all what our Lord Himself has declared. We know
not the Son in the mystery of His nature; but we do know Him in His union of
Godhead and manhood the living Link between God and His creatures. which can
never be undone, and will never give way whatever be the strain upon it. In Him
before God, accepted in the Beloved, we are "bound in the bundle of life with
the Lord our God" in a way no human thought could have dreamed in its highest
imagining. But it is no imagination, but the assurance that He Himself has
given us: "Because I live ye shall live also" (John xiv. 19.)
Go To Chapter Five
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