CHURCH SKEPTICISM.'

WITH great propriety does the "Holy Catholic Church" follow the Trinity as an article of our faith in that wondrous mirror of Christian consciousness the Apostles' Creed. We might say with equal necessity also; for without it there can be no proper faith in the incarnation as such, in which the whole mystery of the Trinity is involved and through which alone it has been revealed to the world; and Christianity, being by this means separated from the incarnation as its central ground, must lose all reality, or at least all distinctive character, becoming a religion of doctrine merely, and differing from Mohammedanism only in its more elevated tone of morality, or from Judaism only in its greater fulness of inspiration.

An actualization is as necessary on the one hand to that Christ-life which is revealed in the incarnation, as the incarnation is on the other to its revelation. Of course this Christ-life was completely actualized in its revelation; yet not in the sense of having gone forth as a living power, or as having actualized itself by bringing into its own organism the whole world which had become regenerated by it. The very assumption of fallen humanity upon the part of the Word was, in Christ's person, its redemption and regeneration; for he assumed it, not to sin with it, but to redeem it, and in this very act is centered the full redemptive power and efficacy of his person. So we can say,

'This article is part of a somewhat extended discussion, called forth originally by a private controversy; an explanation, which may serve to account particularly for the disproportionate length of the notes.

* Cum sub tribus et testatio fidei et sponsio salutis pignorentur, necessario adjicitur Ecclesiae mentio, quoniam ubi tres, id est, Pater, Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus, ibi Ecclesia, quae trium corpus est (Tertullian de Baptis. c. 6, as quoted by Bishop Pearson). In those symbols, where the Church does not immediately follow the third person of the Trinity, the separation is merely grammatical, and not essential, and generally in fact the Church is put at the conclusion ("per sanctam Ecclesiam," cum emphasi), only to show that all the previously mentioned supernatural gifts and powers are lodged in her constitution (see Pearson on the Creed, Art. IX).

This position is, in the main, we acknowledge, contradicted by J. D. Morell. We have Christianity in its objective phase defined by him in his "Philosophy of Religion" p. 123, as "that religion which rests upon the consciousness of the redemption of the world through Jesus Christ." Two conceptions, as the author himself acknowledges, are here brought into view, the one that of redemption, the other that of a personal Redeemer (what the author means by a personal Redeemer seems to be a single individual being, without any reference to the peculiar constitution of his per

that in Him the redemption of the world is actualized, as its fall was in Adam; yet we do mean by this, that his personal life has gone forth into the world and actually Christianized every element of its life, but only, that in the incarnation we find the realized possibility of this historical process, and the absolute necessity of its actualization, as a life power, in the world. Indeed the very element of all life power is concretion, and every living process abhors a dualism as much as nature a vacuum. There is no such thing in the world of nature, mind, or spirit, as a formless idea, nor can there be properly speaking any such thing as an idealess form. Referring Christianity (as we shall hereafter show to be necessary) to the person of Christ for its distinctive character as life, we find that from its very nature it must take up organically into itself and completely redeem the life of the world. This constitutes in its idea the very type of its process, and the peculiar plasticity of its power. As the law of all growth is the development of a central point of evolution, in which the whole possible existence is contained, and the

son). Now, with a proper view of Christ's person, there is no possibility of separating the idea of redemption from a personal Redeemer. Here alone can it, in its complete universality, be reached. In the person of Christ only is that life lodged which is our redemption. Here not only the redeeming power, but the redemption itself centres **"ascendere in altitudinem offerentem et commendantem patri eum hominem, qui fuerat inventus, primitias resurrectionis hominis in semetipso faciens ("Iren. adv. Haer. Lib. iii. c. xxi). "I am the resurrection and the life." In me, not by me as a separate operation, the world, its whole process centering in generic humanity, is reconciled to God and by God. Holding this view, there is no possibility of conceiving with the author, that by referring Christianity for its distinctive character to the person of Christ, it would become merely a form of religious worship, introduced by Him without any necessary reference to the redemption of the world. This would be the case of course, were Christ as a personal Redeemer merely a man, a prophet like Moses, or a fabricator of religion like Mohammed, or a second Adam only. But there is far deeper significancy in his person than all this. In him generic fallen humanity is already Christianized and redeemed, and out of his person there can be no redemption whatever, and also no proper humanity. As the incarnation implies, he is the concrete God-man, and in this concretion, and no where else rests the very conception of Christianity. Lutheranism, for example, may be simply the peculiar doctrines of Luther, as far impersonated as possible and reduced to practice; but Christianity is connected in no such way to Christ. As Coleridge aptly remarks somewhere in his Aids to Reflection, "we do not believe Christ, but believe in Christ;" that is, we do not follow the doctrines of Christ as our leader, but partake of him. "I in you, and you in me," is the Saviour's language. Christianity is his life, not what he taught or did in his life, but the Christlife itself. Not our life of faith, but the life of our faith-its appropriated contents.

whole form prefigured, so Christianity, as historical and evolving itself from Christ's person, can never go out of or beyond that person as constituting its life giving and normative ground.* As humanity can never cease to be Adamic, so neither can Christianity cease to be Christly. If then Christianity thus receives its character from Christ's person, it must of necessity bear along in its constitution his personal life, and that personal life from the very fact of the incarnation, as we shall endeavor to show, must organically take up into itself the life of the world.

Indeed were there no such organic process of actualization, commencing with the person of Christ as its ground and starting point, the incarnation would evidently be shorn of all true significancy and force, and by ceasing to be continuous would become a plain contradiction, as its own nature is the sure evidence of its continuity. It is absurd, for example, to believe in an incarnation, and at the same time imagine that it can resolve itself into an excarnation, and become either pure spirit or pure nature. There is no necessity at all for forcing our faith so far out of itself, as to make us believe that Christ operates with only ex-officio power and in ex-officio style, or that he now stands far aloof from the world, having torn himself asunder from that humanity with which he once entered into organic union. The incarnation, to give it any reality, must have entered with all its peculiar organizing force into the very life-constitution of the world, as a permanent fact; permanent, yet not inactive, as an event or phenomenon recorded and thence remembered; but permanent in its activity, that is, ever moving forward with all the life-unfolding energies of an idea, and never ceasing its process or operation until the conception upon which it rests is fully and historically realized. Now in as much as its own force rests upon the organic union of the human and divine, its history of course must be the development and revelation of its power in the same organic way; not bringing us into God however, so as to make us Christ (nav Xporos), but bringing us into Christ's personal life, so that Christianity may fully complete and realize humanity, and God in Christ reconcile the world unto himself (Θεος ην εν Χριστῷ κόσμον καταλλασσων εαυτῳ 2 Cor. v : 19), thus mak. ing us Christ's (παντες ἐν ἐν Χριστῷ) and thereby God's (ημεις δε Χριστ

In this sense we have used the word idea, and more in accordance with its proper meaning we think.

kara-aos.-The prepositional prefix, and the verbal termination also, render this word very emphatic-a thorough change.

Tov Xpioros de Oεou 1 Cor. iii: 23). This being the case, it is plain that the Church, as this process of actualization, perfect and complete in the person of Christ, and thence going forth as the power of his personal and supernatural life (Ο γαρ αρτος του Θεού εστιν ο καταβαίνων του ουρανου και ζωην διδους τω κοσμῳ John vi : 33), and completing itself in history by incorporating into its own constitution the life of the world, (John xv: 3-5), that life centering in humanity, and there elevated to consciousness; it is plain, we say, that the Church, as thus embodying the vast organic movement of the universe (xa0'-in) toward Christ,' is as absolutely necessary to a proper faith in the incarnation on the one hand, as the incarnation is to its existence on the other. They are inseparably linked together. Their connection is vital and organic. Form and contents, body and soul, inter

8

• We find here, and indeed throughout this whole gospel, that the true relation between the lite of humanity, which is the life of the world, and that of Christ, is that of an organic incorporation of the former by and in that of the latter. Coalescence and incorporation are the terms which Calvin ever employs, in this connection.

7 εις οικονομίαν του πληρώματος των καιρων ανακεφαλαιωσασθαι τα παντα εν τω Χριστῷ Tа TE EV TOLS Oupavois kai rα enɩ τns yns (Eph. i: 10). This is a brief, yet clear and powerful, exposition of the Church's process and destiny. She is considered as containing in herself all history. The law of her progress is the home-law (oikovoμia) of the full realization of all tendencies (rov npwparos των καιρων). In her inward constitution all things (τα παντα with the article more properly the whole, the universe) are reconciled to God in Christ. Here all previous tendencies are recapitulated, unified, substantiated and realized. Here the world is freely and organically taken up into Christ's life-born again by the Spirit into the resurrection life of Christ; who, in his own resurrection, was the first fruits of man's resurrection. The history of the Church is thus made the history of history, the central ground whence all other processes take their position and significancy. She records not the events of the world's separate life, but the very birth travails of her regeneration to a new life, and the truth revealings of her new awakened and ever widening consciousness. Irenaeus writes very forcibly in reference to this recapitulatory process: "Unus igitur Deus Pater quemadmodum ostendimus et unus Christus Jesus Dominus noster veniens per universam dispositionem et omnia in semitipso recapitulans in omnibus autem est, et homo plasmatio Dei, et hominem ergo in semetipso recapitulatus est, invisibilis visibilis factus, et incomprehensibilis factus comprehensibilis, et impassibilis passibilis, et verbum homo, universa in semetipsum recapitulans, uti sicut in supercoelestibus et spiritualibus et in visibilibus et corporalibus principatum habeat in semetipsum primatum assumens et apponens semetipsum apto in tempore" (Iren. adv. Haer. Lib. iii. c. xxiii). Calvin also: "denique sine Christo totus mundus est quasi deforme chaos et horrenda confusio. Solus ipse nos colligit in veram unitatem" (Calv. Com. on New Tes.).

8 ώσπερ όπου αν η Χριστος Ιησούς εκει η καθολικη εκκλησία (Ignat. Ep. ad Smyrn. c. 8).

penetrate and live in each other, and the Church is thus the living actual embodiment of the incarnate mystery. Divide them, and the incarnation becomes a merely transient phenomenon, with no permanent or continuous force for the world or man; and the church, instead of being the body and fulness of Christ, proves itself but a lifeless empty corpse. If the life-power of Christ's person does not enter into the very constitution of the Church, it is of no efficacy to the world. If his life-blood does not circulate through her every artery and vein, it becomes stagnant and destitute of all vivific power for his people. If the Church, as the mother of us all, has no living wedlock with Christ, we are but bastard sons and daughters, with no legitimate prospect of the inheritance. Hence we say that the church with equal propriety and necessity follows the incarnation as an article of our faith in the Creed.

Mysterious in her constitution, which is leavened with the active power of Christ's incorruptible and supernatural life, her nature and mission can only be perceived and felt by faith. God must be in Christ reconciling the world unto himself by the Holy Ghost, in the Church, which is Christ's body, in which we are united in the closest communion as members of each other and of him from whom we thus receive full forgiveness in our complete at-one ment, and that life which is our resurrection and our everlasting life.

10

This leads us to examine somewhat more closely, before discussing the nature of the Church, the doctrine of the incarnation, holding as it does such a central position in that "regula fidei," the substance of which we have just given. We shall do this first in a historical way, showing how it has been apprehended and established by the early Church. Our point here, is not to determine what may be termed the ground of the incarnation, involved in the question "Cur Deus Homo," but only to show that its full force as real and redemptive, and as apprehended by the Church, rests upon the peculiar constitution of Christ's person as the organic union of the human and divine. In this union we shall endeavor to find that central point of evolution, which is essentially necessary to constitute Christiani

9

και έσονται οι δύο εις σαρκα μιαν (Ephes. v. 31-32).

10 There would be no necessity of pursuing this course, did not both the modern Arian and Gnostic spirit ostensibly parade the christology and church-thought of this period in its favor; in a manner entirely inconsistent and unjust however, and without at all recognizing their true force and consequence.