The Man Christ Jesus: Remarks on a Tract Entitled "The Person of the Christ"
Alexander Craven Ord
Table of Contents
Preface
In presenting the following pages to the saints of God the writer earnestly beseeches his brethren to allow no reasoning upon the Person of the blessed Lord to dim the infinite grace and beauty which marks HIM wherever or however He is seen: whether in the lowly manger, trusting in God upon His mother’s breasts {Psa. 22:9}, or thence onwards to the Father’s throne in glory.
It is HIMSELF we should see wherever or however we behold Him. Moral glories surely there were shining forth in all His words and ways, but, above and beyond all that was of Him, there is HIMSELF to fill the heart an d to cause the affections to overflow in praise and adoration. HIMSELF, a Person, truly God and truly Man; no less God because in the fulness of the time He became Man and no less Man because He is eternally God; but uniting both Godhead and Manhood in the unity and indivisibility of His holy and inscrutable PERSON.
No personal question is here raised. The truth alone is involved, and the author of this paper has no feelings towards any of his brethren other than those of love and earnest desire for their blessing. May the Word and Spirit of God be their guide.
It matters not who it is that speaks, for it is written
To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them (Isa. 8:20).
"The Man Christ Jesus" 1 Timothy 2:5 Remarks on a Tract Entitled ?the Person of the Christ?
1 Timothy 2:5
Remarks on a Tract Entitled “The Person of the Christ”
I am quite aware of, and accept the ordinary orthodox statement of two natures in one person . . . the simple faith that Jesus was God and man in one person can be easily accepted as plain and vital truth; but the moment you deny personality in the Man Christ Jesus, you run into a thousand difficulties and errors. What is really denied is Christ’s individuality as a man.
This extract from Mr. Darby’s paper “Christological Pantheism,” applies with equal force to Mr. R.’s {F. E. Raven} doctrine upon “The Person of Christ” and to those teachings of which it was written. Christ’s human personality is, we shall find, denied by the teaching of the tract before us, as really as it was by the doctors of whom the foregoing sentence was written. To insist upon “Christ’s individuality as a man,” is not to teach “two individualities,” nor does “the simple faith that Jesus was God and Man in one person” in any sense involve “a dual personality.” In Him Godhead and Manhood are united in His holy and blessed Person; God in person and Man in person: yet but one Person – “the Christ, who is over all God blessed for ever.”
The Person of Christ is a theme alike of endless beauty and attraction to those in whom His love has awakened a response: an object of boundless praise and adoration for the heart that know s Himself. The heights of glory and depths of humiliation so intimately connected therewith appeal at once to the heart, and engross the mind taught by the Spirit of God.
Not only do the counsels of God, whether in grace or government, center around that Person, “according as He has chosen us in Him before the world’s foundation,” or “according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself . . . to head up all things in the Christ”; but beyond these blessings and glories which in the purposes of God are associated with His Person, the Holy Ghost occupies us with the pre-eminence that intrinsically belongs to His Person – the especial glories of His Person itself.
And it is worthy of remark, as showing the mind of the Spirit of God, that, in the Scripture which, more than any other perhaps, is full of these glories of His Person (Col. 1 and 2), we learn the truth, that occasion has been taken of His humiliation, to signally honor, according to the purpose and pleasure of the Godhead, by a special and distinctive glory, the Person who thus became Man.
God has invested His Person as become Man with a peculiar glory, which distinctively belongs alone to Him all the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in His Person (Col 1:19), and this in so inscrutable a manner (Col. 2:9), that bodily that fulness dwells in Him. Thus we see that when with a view to God’s glory, the eternal Son takes a place where His Deity might be questioned and denied (i.e., in becoming Man), there is this glorious answer to His humiliation, in that thus come down all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him. His humanity was and is the bodily expression of the Godhead – God has been manifested in flesh. All that God is, is seen there, in a bodily form, in the Person of Christ.
It is not merely that the Godhead was and is there morally shining through the humanity He had assumed, as if “in becoming Man He gave character to manhood” (this Mr. R. insists on): it is that there, in that blessed Person, the fulness of the Godhead corporeally dwells. Though purposing thus to dwell in the Son become Man, the fulness of the Godhead had never before thus dwelt in a Person. This is the foundation of Christianity in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. This (whatever Mr. R. may seem to say to the contrary elsewhere) the teaching of the tract denies; merely “admitting that, morally, Christ’s manhood had its unique and blessed character from God.”
Nor is it simply these statements of the author which imply the denial of this great reality of the incarnation. In the tract we are about to consider we shall see that this truth is systematically set aside. It is utterly impossible that the Divine Person which it presents in manhood condition can thus be, in His Person, bodily the fulness of the Godhead there can be no objective corporeal expression of Godhead seeing that Christ’s humanity is, by the author, so separated that it may be viewed distinct from His Person. In his teaching, humanity is assumed in order that Christ “may be viewed objectively as man”: in Colossians, on the contrary, the humanity of Christ is presented as that whereby the Godhead fulness dwells in Him, that GOD may thus be presented objectively in Man. In the author’s view of humanity it is man, and man objectively only, that is seen therein: in the other it is the whole Godhead bodily.
Could anything show more clearly the terrible character and extent of this heresy?
The tract entirely destroys the truth revealed in Luke 1 as to the conception and birth of Christ. We see there that, even as to His birth as man, real and true as His humanity is, He was called the Son of God: so miraculously did the power of God act upon the vessel He had chosen, and become the divine source of the life of “that holy thing” which was born of the Virgin {Luke 1:35}. Terrible thought indeed it is, how “very derogatory to the truth of the Son” no pen can describe, to vainly imagine that the Manhood of Christ – “that holy thing” – could dishonor the Person of Him who thus became Man.
God is the source of His being as man. Yet He is the seed of the woman.
In the words of another
It was a child really conceived in Mary’s womb, who brought forth this child at the time which God has Himself appointed for human nature . . . He was really and truly man, born of a woman as we are – not as to the source nor as to the manner of His conception, of which we are not yet speaking, but as to the reality of His existence as man. He was really and truly a human being . . . She inquires how it shall be accomplished since it must be done outside the order of nature. The angel proceeds with his commission, making known to her the answer of God to this question also . . . The birth of Him who has walked upon this earth was the thing in question – His birth of the virgin Mary. He was God, He became man; but here it is the manner of His conception in becoming a man upon the earth. It is not WHAT He was that is declared. It is He who was born, such as He was in the world, of whose miraculous conception we here read. The Holy Ghost should come upon her – should act in power upon this earthen vessel, without its own will or the will of any man. God is the source of the life of the child promised to Mary, as born in this world and by His power. He is born of Mary – of this woman chosen by God. The power of the Highest should overshadow her, and therefore that which SHOULD BE BORN OF HER should be called the Son of God. Holy in His birth conceived by the intervention of the power of God acting upon Mary (a power which was the divine source of His existence on the earth, as man), that which thus received its being from Mary, the fruit of her womb, should even in this sense have the title of Son of God. The holy thing which should be born of Mary should be called the Son of God. It is not here the doctrine of the eternal relationship of the Son with the Father. The Gospel of John, the Epistle to the Hebrews, that to the Colossians, establish this precious truth, and demonstrate its importance; but here it is that which was born by virtue of the miraculous conception which on that ground is called the Son of God.
Of this miraculous manner of the conception of this holy Person, who was to have the title of the Son of God “even in this sense,” the tract knows nothing: it knows only human “condition” in contrast to a Christ who is personally and in the fullest sense man; the real human nature of Christ being lost by separating His manhood from His Person.
That Christ may be looked at with infinite profit to our souls in His ways and character as Man, and in the various places and offices He fills as Man, always remembering that it is One Person – God and man – who is so viewed is truth that we need to be reminded of. But this is altogether another thing from a system which separates His Manhood from His Person, or as Mr. R. clearly puts it to view Him “as man distinct and apart from what He is as God.” What He is as God and what He is as Man, can never be divided or seen apart. It is a distinct partition of His Person incarnate, leading here as we shall see to the fatal consequences of the denial of His humanity as being now essential to His Person, and the limitation thereof to “human condition.”
To view Him there as God or here in the grace and perfection of His humanity, here acting as a Divine Person or there according to the place He has taken or received as Man, is surely after the manner in which the Holy Ghost delights to present Him to us. But this in no way leads to the denial of the “absolute unity of His Person, though in a taken nature,” the truth which the teaching of the tract entirely destroys.
It is the Person who gives value to the work – gives dignity to the offices He fills, and enhances the beauty of the scene wherever we view Him. There is no dual personality, and most assuredly the Person is not changed although He is really Man in Nature and Being and Person but He that is such is God; and human intellect, in Mr. R. as elsewhere, refuses this holy mystery of One Person both God and Man. That is, his doctrine does not allow (whatever he may hold theoretically) of the union of the two natures in the Person of Christ. It allows only that He is a Divine Person in human “condition” as opposed to “person.”
The author of the tract in question need not tell us that he does not respect orthodoxy – everyone who reads what he has written m ay see that for himself – but to talk as he does about “expressions found in hymns, and the like which have been used simply and devoutly by Christians without any very strict inquiry into their real force,” is positive misrepresentation of well-known facts. It is matter of common knowledge that the doctrine treated in the tract and the truth which the “expressions found in hymns” feebly present, are so far from being the mere vague expressions of pious feelings, that they have ever formed the subjects of the most searching inquiries and of the hottest controversies amongst Christians. The existence of the so-called Athanasian Creed proves it.
No one questions the responsibility of a Christian to examine received doctrines in the light of God’s Word, and the necessity of rejecting them if proved false is equally unquestionable. In such a case rejection cannot be too distinct and emphatic. But if orthodox views of Christ’s Person be false we challenge the author to state it without reserve, so that all may know his mind. Let there be that truthful candor which points out (if exposing error) the material and irreconcilable nature of the conflicting teachings. Let him distinctly avow, that which it is evident he teaches, nam ely, that of the union of the Godhead nature with human nature in the Person of Christ he knows nothing and will admit nothing; so that many who now support him and apologize for his ambiguity of expression in ignorance of his real belief, may no longer be deceived.
Let him boldly say “You have all been wrong for eighteen hundred years and more, and your doctrines are those of the apostasy,” and let him not affect to “judge,” what he must know is not the case, that those who withstand his doctrines do not know the “real force” of language which expresses, in a human manner and measure we own, the deep and unfathomable truth (as we believe) which forms the basis of orthodox teaching concerning the Person of Christ.
Such a course is utterly unworthy, to say the least, of one who attempts to teach upon so important and fundamental a subject. The author knows well enough that it is no mere question of “expressions found in hymns, and the like,” which he with pious pity can set aside as the swaddling-clothes of devout ignorance and pious simplicity. He knows that these “expressions” are not isolated or accidental utterances, but that they express a doctrine which is to be found clearly and forcibly stated in the writings of orthodox teachings everywhere. In none perhaps more clearly than in those of “brethren” so-called.
Or does he see, in this subtle method of depreciating “orthodoxy” by labeling it “confusion of thought” and treating it as the product of ignorance fostered only by inexact and indefinite “expressions,” his most powerful weapon for disarming opposition and spreading his erroneous views? for there is nothing so successful to-day as learned ridicule and lofty contempt as a means of discrediting the truth of God. Consequently “development” makes rapid strides on every hand. This tract we are considering is itself a terrible and condemning proof of the working of the corrupt “gangrene” in places where once (alas! that it is so no longer) the truth was held. The grace of God which has so signally recovered to us the truth in these last days is itself turned into an occasion for deceiving souls by suggestions of fresh light or new truth.
We solemnly charge Mr. R. with presenting teachings utterly subversive of the doctrine hitherto taught and received amongst us as the truth concerning the Person of Christ: and, under the pretext of removing the offshoots of pious ignorance, with secretly sapping the foundations of the common faith of Christians.
Our endeavor will be, the Lord helping us, so clearly to trace to its fountain-head this e vil stream of anti-Christian doctrine, as to put the simple soul on its guard against its seductive downward current, and set the warning lamp of Scripture so plainly before the eyes, that the Christ-dishonoring results, to which its rapids hurry the unwatchful, may be seen before it is too late. If the light which makes all things manifest, shines fully on the source and spring of error, we shall the more easily trace the course whither it tends, and be enabled the better to see how it is that so m any have been engulfed in its dangerous waters, who, finding themselves involved in it only on its emergence from the bewildering recesses which ecclesiastical craft had cunningly wrought for it, little suspected the nature of the source or the fearful catastrophe towards which the stream was carrying them, even shipwreck concerning the faith.
It is another than Mr. R. who is the originator of this stream of evil doctrine, another than he who excavated its fountain-head and brought forth thence this devastating flood: one who knowing fully the relation of cause and effect throughout the whole of its course of error, and thoroughly aware of what he aims at in it, has known how to bring it forth and present it to the eye in the way most deceptive to the saints of God. He has used the more effectually to achieve his ends, much that appears like the truth, both in substance and form, but so perverted or removed from its right connection with the Truth Himself and the doctrine of His Person, that it absolutely falsifies the truth. But God has fully provided in His Word everything we may need both to escape from error and that we may not be ignorant of the devices of Satan. As to the instrument employed by the enemy to open the floodgates of error, it is likely enough that it is only little by little that he has become aware of the springs and upper courses of that which he was at first employed to let loose.
Two words used by him in connection with his treatment of the Person of Christ on page 3 of his tract are plain evidence of the fatal character of his teaching upon the question at issue. And it is important to notice that these words are used not unadvisedly nor without due consideration, but the contrary, for, as the italics show special attention is directed to them. The author knows that the “real force” of these words, at any rate, and their bearing upon the subject matter of his tract, is a point of the last importance.
Mr. R. charges those who maintain “that the truth of Christ’s Person consists in the union in Him of God and Man” with “confusion of thought as between person and condition,” and, in his attempt to sustain this charge, he abandons what in all ages has been the common faith of Christians. Let us see what the doctrine is which he thus assails and rejects.
We, in common with all orthodox believers, believe that Christ is Go d as to His Person: we also believe that he was in the form (or condition) of Godhead.
We believe, in common with them, that Christ became Man as to His Person, (“the Word became flesh”) without thereby ceasing to be God, or affecting in any degree the unity of His Person: we also believe that He took upon Him the form of a servant, i.e., human condition. We distinguish in the case of His humanity, as in that of His Divinity, between “person and condition,” nor is Mr. R. warranted in calling this “confusion.”
We believe that in the Person of Christ the Divine and human natures are inscrutably united, each, but without separation or confusion, essential to w hat He now is as “the Christ”: and that this wondrous truth forms the mystery of the incarnation, and is the truth of the Person of Christ. “Man taken into union with God in one person.” We believe that Scripture, by the enlightening power and grace of the Holy Spirit, teaches in the most unmistakable manner, to the simple soul, these unfathomable truths concerning the Person of Christ, and that, although no change has taken place in His eternal Being and Nature, no change of the Person – He is the same Person, the Son – yet that this Person has become, in assuming humanity, that which He was not before – He has become Man: nor do we confound this truth with that which is inseparable therefrom, and is indeed collateral therewith, namely, the status or condition or form of humanity He took.
Mr. R. repudiates this doctrine as “confusion” begotten of ignorance: and he asserts that the thought “that in becoming man a change has taken place as to His Person – He is in person something which He was not before” is “very derogatory to the truth of the Son.” He teaches that to hold that Christ became “in person something which He was not before,” that is, Man as to His Person, is inconsistent with the truth that He is “the same Person,” who was “eternally with the Father,” thus confusing His personal identity with His Person. These truths are in no way inconsistent the one with the other: there is no antagonism whatsoever between them. Nor, be it noticed unless it be to remove the mystery of the incarnation, is there any need to deny that Christ is in person Man as well as God, and thus, to limit His humanity to “condition,” as we shall see Mr. R. does in his tract.
We fully accept and, by grace, tenaciously hold the truth both of the eternal and unchangeable personality of Christ, and of that which is expressed by the words “form or condition” in their connection with the Person of Christ.
The truth of Phil. 2, that He who subsisted in the form of God, emptied Himself, and assumed a servant’s form, is only rightly apprehended when the truth of His human as well as Divine Being is acknowledged. The truth, that the personal identity of the One who was in the form of God and who assumed a servant’s form is unchanged, is absolutely essential to the truth of His Person. It cannot be too strongly insisted on. But together with it the truth must be maintained, that He whose personal identity is unquestionably unaltered and unalterable, who was, when He became Man, the same Divine Person that He was from eternity, yet this Person is He who became something – “was made flesh” – He Himself became “something which He was not before.”
But this is not included in the thought of “form or condition.” The form of God belonged indeed to the very same Person who took the form of a servant, but to assert that His humanity is that of “form or condition” alone, and not of nature or “person” is no less evil than to teach that His Divinity was that of “form” alone and not of nature or “person.” Yet this is what Mr. R. necessarily does, and practically and in effect limits, as will be shown in the sequel, His humanity to “condition” or “form.”
These truths are collateral but not identical: another has brought them together in one passage, equally insisting on each. He says
But here is One who was in the form of God, the very status and condition of Divinity, and takes another form and goes down to death, even the same Divine Person never proved more so than in His humiliation, but who became something (“was made flesh”).
With a quality that is impossible –
it (the quality) is always the identical idea it was before if not, it is not it. The Word became flesh, did not cease to be the Word, but was what it was not before – became something – and subsequently took manhood into Divine Glory. Personal identity can change its state or form – ideal identity must remain what it is or identity is gone.
Here we have a Divine Person who not only acted “in regard to His form or condition, divine or human”; (Mr. R. will allow this much, and, in effect at least, no more:)but here we have also the fact clearly insisted upon that this Divine Person became something which He was not before. Of this truth Mr. R. says “This is not the teaching of Scripture, nor do I think that it can be entertained.”
Having thus before us the distinct denial of the truth that the Lord became “in person something which He was not before,” that is, clearly, Man, we will now see what the character of His humanity is according to this teaching.
The author owns (and here we should not object) that the distinction “between person and condition” as he puts it exists in respect to the Divinity of Christ, for he speaks of “the form of God” as distinct from “A divine Person,” and says “We have thus a divine Person presented, even apart from the question of form,” so that thus far the ground appears to be common; yet with this his application of the thought of “person” ceases, and the Lord’s humanity is placed upon a lower plane, as a thing of “condition” alone from which what He is HIMSELF “in person” is carefully separated.
All thought of “What He was in His Person as Man” to use again the words of another, is refused unequivocally by Mr. R. and where this is denied, it is plain that, as he says, it “is not a question of unity of a Person.” To speak of “The absolute unity of His Person,” He must have become in His Person man, or no question can arise as to the unity of His Person. In the following sentence we have the clear and positive enunciation of his doctrine. Mr. R. says, “The truth of a divine Person assuming human condition, the Word becoming flesh, and in such wise as that He can be viewed objectively as man I believe; but that is not a question of unity of a Person. It is a Person in a condition in which He was not previously.”
Thus plainly is the truth denied. As J. N. D. said of Mr. Sen
The true Christ in both parts of His Being, i.e., the Divine and the human,”
is not held; but is set aside in one essential respect by this destructive teaching, which admits a divine Person, and a divine Person only, and persistently separates therefrom the humanity of Christ: distinctly alleging that
the idea of the unity of the Person in the sense asserted is not found.
It acknowledges only one part of His Being, i.e., the Divine, and really sets aside the other part of His being i.e., the human. Is this the “Christ whose Person, God and Man,” has formed the substance of the teaching which we have heretofore received? The same writer, from whom I have just quoted, has said of the First Epistle of John “The way in which God and man in One Person are united and presented in the blessed Lord in this Epistle, strikes me more and more, so that it is impossible to apply them distinctly; 1 John 5:20, giving the clue to it.” And he again speaks of
the wonderful bringing together of God and Man in the Person of Christ
which we get “in the end of ch. 2 and beginning of ch. 3.” Will the author assert that “the idea of the unity of the Person in the sense” of His being “God and man in One Person” is not found here? He dare not do so. Will he then tell us plainly that he has abandoned that which this honored servant of Christ ever insisted upon as the foundations of the faith? That he has done so, whatever he may think or say, is alas! but too plain from what we have already seen.
But these are not all the proofs this tract supplies us with of the fact that this system denies the Christ of God for, consistently with the denial that Christ became as to His “person” man, and the consequent limitation of His humanity to “condition” under point two, it severs the incarnation from the Person of the Son under point one the one error being but the counterpart of the other. It is a solemn and pregnant testimony to the unsoundness of this teaching that it renders it an imperative necessity to separate the Scripture “No one knows the Son but the Father,” from the Person of Christ in order to prevent the overthrow of the system thereby. For, if it be applied to the mystery of His Person as become incarnate, then it proves that His humanity, as well as His Divinity, belongs to His Person, and the theory fails.
Another has remarked upon this Scripture
Now that He has clothed what is Divine in human nature none can fathom it.
The teaching of the tract studiously ignores all thought therein of His Person, the substance of the teaching in connection therewith on page 1, paragraph 5, being, No one knows the Son in His two aspects as man – Apostle and High Priest – i.e., so as to grasp these two thoughts at one and the same time, save the Father. Thus the union in One Person of Godhead and manhood is again denied and a counterfeit duality of two “wholly distinct conceptions” of Christ as man is presented in its stead; His Divine Person being scrupulously eliminated therefrom.
And these two aspects of Christ as man are set forth apparently, as the author’s “great reality of the incarnation,” the charge against us being, substantially that, by maintaining that what Christ is as man cannot be seen apart from what He is as God, i.e., by maintaining the truth of the indivisibility of His whole Person – “God and man in One Person” – we betray “a singular inability to apprehend” one of these two “essential” aspects of it.
Whether any other aspect thereof is considered essential is not stated, but one thing is very clear, namely, that the doctrine “that the truth of Christ’s Person” – the mystery of the incarnation – “consists in the union in Him of God and man,” i.e., of Godhead and manhood, forms no part of it whatever; neither essential or non-essential.
Let the reader make no mistake, or imagine that there is any misapprehension of the author’s meaning. It is in direct support of his first proposition, (which necessarily involves the partition of Christ’s Person, if the incarnation be what we have ever held it to be,) that he proceeds to present as “the great reality of the incarnation,” etc., these two aspects of Christ as man, two aspects which can be here in no way essential to His Person, as he insists on page 3 that Christ’s humanity is that of “condition” as opposed to “person.” There can be no misunderstanding the teaching here, if carefully read, for although the last clause of paragraph 5, “The one presents God, the other man,” looks marvelously like, The one presents Christ as God – a Divine Person, in contrast to the other presenting Him on the other side of His Person as Man, it will be plainly seen upon examination of the whole clause, in its relation to the first proposition, and in its connection with the teaching of the third page, and indeed, of the entire tract, which wholly denies this truth, that no such thought is intended or can be entertained. “The one presents God the other, man” is not His Godhead Being in contrast to His Manhood, but forms a brief summing up of Christ viewed in the two aspects as Man: i.e., Apostle – His place as man towards men revealing God: High Priest – His place as man towards God. So Mr. R. explains
As Man He is both Apostle and High Priest. In other words, in the Apostle God has, so to say, come out and in the High Priest man has entered in.
These two thoughts of Christ as Man form together his “great reality of the incarnation,” etc., to which he applies Matt. 11:27: two thoughts which he says “cannot be grasped at one and the same time by any finite mind” for “No one knows the Son save the Father,” but he adds
Now these two thoughts, though realized in one Person, must of necessity be separately and distinctly apprehended.
These two “distinct conceptions” take the place in this system of the union in the Person of Christ, of both God and Man – the mystery of the incarnation; which is refused by this teaching.
Thus the writer not only betrays his inability to apprehend the great reality of the incarnation, which he has clearly assumed to do, and, by presenting “two thoughts .. . realized in one Person” for the apprehension of the “finite mind,” destroys the mystery of the incarnation which in Scripture is presented as the truth of the Person of Christ, “God and Man in One Person”: but it is worthy of note, in connection with his charge against us that, by thus subverting the truth of Christ’s Person, His real human nature is lost which fits Him for our High Priest, i.e., for His place as man Godward: and at the same time the reality of Christ’s Person is set aside, as the Word become flesh dwelling among men and revealing God; the One in whom all the fulness was pleased to dwell. For the incarnation, or coming in flesh of Jesus Christ, is separated from His Person and presented only as a means by which “He can be viewed objectively as man.” And thus for the purpose of viewing Christ “as man, distinct and apart from what He is as God,” or in other words, apart from what He is in Person (for these words have plainly this meaning in the tract), His holy Person is ruthlessly dissected, the reality of His humanity totally destroyed, and the mystery of the incarnation absolutely denied.
We find from the Revised Notes of Meetings at Quemerford, May 1895, which have come to our hands that there this teaching was reiterated, and is now sent forth apparently with the sanction (for the distinctly pronounced doctrine went uncontradicted) of that representative Conference as “Truth for the Time.” And not only so, but to support this terrible heresy an utterly false interpretation of J. N. D. is credited to Mr. R.: for in explanation of a statement by “A. H.” that “J. N. D. says, Christ is God Christ is Man. He is Christ as both”: “F. E. R.” is reported to have replied
Yes; but you must think of what was meant by it. He is not man in the sense that He is God. J. N. D. said many times, He could not change His Person. In Person He is God, in condition He is man.
Now, if this is not deliberate misrepresentation, it is at any rate the fruit of the most culpable negligence, for, the sentence from which it is quoted, cannot by any possible means be contorted into meaning anything but the exact opposite. The Scripture of which he is writing is also made void, for the Holy Ghost presents in Colossians a Divine Person incarnate, and not merely “a divine Person in the condition of human life down here” whose “Manhood in His case derived its character from what He Himself was.” What J. N. D. says is
Also it must be remembered, that that which is said is said, when He was manifested in the flesh, of His complete person, man upon earth. Not that we do not in our minds separate the divinity and the humanity; but even in separating them we think of the one person with regard to whom we do so. We say Christ is God Christ is Man; but it is Christ who is the two.
But, in express contradiction to this truth, Mr. R. insists that “there could be no difference between the eternal Son and the Son born in time except as to His condition.” There is thus no meaning whatever in speaking of “the one person” whose divinity and humanity we may in our own minds think of separately. And the sentence in the Synopsis is reduced to an absurdity. By the rejection of the thought of “the unity of the person” J. N. D. is rendered unintelligible, when he thus speaks of “the one person,” for it is a question of divinity and humanity in His Person.
The Word of God speaks of One, whose humanity so essentially belongs to His Person, that corporeally – bodily – the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him. It is not only a question of that “which came out in Him morally . . . a divine Person in the condition of human life down here,” as Mr. R. would make it; it is a question of “WHAT HE HIMSELF WAS” in His Person, as having become flesh AND ONLY AS SUCH: the Person – “Man upon earth”– in whom the fulness was pleased to dwell; thus presenting “HIS COMPLETE PERSON” for our wonder and praise – “the one person,” who was as to His Person both divine and human. Can Mr. R. be really ignorant of the fact that J. N. D. is unquestionably speaking of “The true Christ in both parts of His Being, i.e., the divine and the human,” when he says of Him, “Christ is God, Christ is man”? and that he taught in Christ’s Person humanity “was united to Godhead.”
The truth of the Person of Christ is not only the immense fact which underlies it all, namely, that He is a Divine Person in the Godhead, as is also the Father and the Holy Ghost: but besides this there is the mighty truth that Christ the Son – One of the Persons in the Godhead, has taken human nature into union with His own – “the Word became flesh”; nor is even this all – blessedly true as it is for Scripture shows that in the Person of Christ we have also GOD MANIFESTED – God in all that He is in the unity of the Godhead – Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. “No one has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, HE hath declared Him.”
GOD “who only has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen, nor is able to see”; who, as to His essential Being or substance is undiscoverable, is revealed in the Son, “who being the effulgence of His glory and the expression of His substance” {Heb. 1:3}, has been down here in this world.
But to thus manifest God He became a Man. “In Him all the fulness was pleased to dwell,” associating thus the whole Trinity in the work of redemption – “by Him to reconcile all things to itself.” It is this peculiar and distinctive glory of Christ, the INCARNATE SON, “who is image of the invisible God,” which marks Col. 1:19. It is not how the fulness dwells in Him, but the Person in whom it dwells. It is not the Father or the Holy Ghost: the Holy Ghost in His jealousy for the especial glory which, as to His Person (His special place and authority are other things), distinguishes the Son become Man, leaves no room for such a thought. It reminds us of Matt. 11:27, where the Father holds the secret of the Son’s Person: so beautifully do we see the Father and the Holy Ghost unite to cover and maintain the glory of the Person of the Son become man.
It is not at all a question of what belongs necessarily to each as Persons in the Godhead, but it is the peculiar glory connected with the Son as become Man. There is no mention of “bodily” in Col. 1, lest it might be suggested that all the fulness dwells equally in the Father and the Holy Ghost, only not bodily so.
. . . in him all the fulness [of the Godhead] was pleased to dwell (Col. 1:19)
It is the Person in whom it dwells – CHRIST, the SON and that as become Man.
The manner of its dwelling in Him we have in Col. 2:9
For in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily
for this was in order that God’s “substance” might be expressed. It is not merely that the fulness was in His body, as if, to use a figure, His humanity were a casket (a lovely casket) enclosing a gem of priceless worth. Such a doctrine as this would as effectually destroy the truth of His Person as the most emphatic denial thereof.
This Scripture shows that that which expresses the Godhead (i.e., Christ’s humanity) so essentially belongs to his Person who expresses it, that it is itself spoken of as that which it expresses. This doctrine is practically demonstrated when the Lord says to Philip, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father.” We might add that in point of fact Colossians goes deeper than Christ’s being bodily the expression of the Godhead: it teaches what is necessary in order to its expression, namely, that the fulness of the Godhead is in Christ and that in a bodily or corporeal manner. This truth is the basis of its expression.
In itself Godhead subsisted and ever subsists, as we have seen, in unapproachable light. In the Person of Christ as become Man it subsists corporeally: by men and angels the fulness of the Godhead has been seen bodily in Him in this world – here engaged in the work of redemption: and is now bodily in Him in the glory of God. Nor can all the mystic philosophy of the mind of Man, led astray by Satan supplant the tangible reality, for a soul who, “rooted and built up in Him,” is “assured in the faith.” No.
That which is said is said, when He was manifested in the flesh, of His COMPLETE PERSON, MAN UPON EARTH.
It is not said of a m ere “condition” He assumed. This touches in no way the Divine Person of the Son, who was ever absolutely complete in Himself (as are the other Persons in the Godhead,) and who could be nothing less than this, nor does it touch the truth that would make it heresy to say that His Person was completed by His Manhood. But it is what the Son is as become Man – the Son incarnate – that is set forth in Col. 1; the glories of His whole and complete Person – God and Man in one Person – as He is made known to us in coming in flesh. It reveals the truth concerning His Person, not only in respect of His eternal Deity, though necessarily declaring this as the basis of all else, but it unfolds the glorious Person of the Son – the Creator – as having become Man, “the image of the invisible God,” in whom it was the good pleasure that all the fulness should dwell. This is “His complete person, man upon earth” of which J. N. D. speaks. To leave out His humanity as this evil system does i.e., in its reality as essential to His PERSON, is to have not a complete, but an incomplete Christ, however much may apparently be made of His Deity. Scripture shows that what He became is as essential to His Person as is His eternal Being: so that whether I think of His Godhead or of His Manhood, it is He Himself who is before my mind: and each thought of Him calls forth the worship of the heart that thus knows Him. Whatever the mind of man may invent, the heart of the believer is satisfied with no Person but this.
The Son, in His very person, in His nature (and for us as in the bosom of the Father), is He who makes God known, because He presents Him in His own person and in a full revelation of His being and of His character before men and in the whole universe; for all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Him.
Nevertheless He is a man. He is thus seen of angels.
We have seen Him with our eyes or by faith. Thus He is the image of the invisible God. The perfect character and living representation of the invisible God have been seen in Him. Wondrous truth for us with regard to the person of our Savior!
Marvelous truth! Matchless grace! He has become (thus being “God and Man in One Person” ), that which He took in order thereby to reveal God. This is the mystery of His Person. Unutterable and holy secret of infinite wisdom and grace. Nor, whilst maintaining (alas! in the face of its denial) the truth of this mystery, would we attempt – far be the thought – its solution.
The Christ Mr. R. presents is not this Person. His Christ is not a real Christ. Corporeally He is not a Person.
His humanity is not Himself, i.e. it is not essential to what He is “in person.” Christ is lost, Christ, in all the reality –the tangible, corporeal reality – of a Person in whom bodily the fulness of the Godhead dwells. Thus to unite His humanity to His Person would dishonor Him, he tells us for He would thus have become “in person something which He was not before,” a thought he refuses as “derogatory”; so that, of necessity, he must separate consistently with the teaching of his tract, “the fulness of the Godhead” which dwells in Him “bodily” from His Person. The conclusion is inevitable, that the Christ he presents is not the One “in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells as to His Person”; or, as the same writer expresses it again, “God, in His perfect fulness, in Christ as man.” Who will give up this Person, a real true Man, yet God withal, for a system which denies that His Person includes His Manhood, and substitutes a Christ who is not “God and man in one person”? We might multiply quotations from the same writer and will add here a few extracts to show how fully he taught the exact opposite of this doctrine in respect to Christ’s essential humanity. Of John’s Gospel he writes
He is made flesh, is full of grace and truth, as a living Person down here as a Man, (and) this is important in John, for while showing He was I AM, yet we always find Christ personally, as Man, the recipient of all from God; we always find Him as made flesh, and speaking as such, whatever that Man might be.
There is no meaning whatever in these quotations unless the writer held a directly contrary view of Christ’s Person to the teaching o f the tract, i.e., unless he held that the incarnation – the humanity of Christ, is essential to the truth of His Person: or, as Mr. Darby himself expresses it that “He had true humanity, but united to Godhead.” To deny this fundamental truth is to deny the faith. This is the position (unwittingly we trust) of the writer of the tract.
We say it advisedly and with a sense of the gravity of the charge, that the mystery of the incarnation – “the Word became flesh” – becoming that which He was not before, i.e. becoming man: this immense foundation truth he unequivocally refuses, and says of it, “This is not the teaching of scripture, nor do I think that it can be entertained.” The “unity of the Person” he scouts as an “idea.” And summing up the truth of the Person of Christ as become man, he says
It is a Person in a condition in which He was not previously.”
This denial of the mystery of the incarnation forms the root of his teaching. This controversy is no mere strife of words: it is the outcome of a subtle and determined attack upon the truth, which, by overthrowing the real humanity of Christ, touches Him vitally in His Person, His Work His Service, and His Glory. With much talk of Christ as Man, and much apparent zeal for Him as a Divine Person the truth of His Person is effectually undermined. There is no PERSON who has BECOME MAN, in this system.
Let us then turn to Scripture that “It is written” may be the authority both for the presentation of the truth and for our denunciation of these doctrines.
Matt. 11: 27; John 6:51; Luke 1:35; Col. 2:9; present the Christ, whose Person as become incarnate, is therefore indissoluble and inscrutable – whom “No one knows but the Father.”
John 1:14; 6:32-58; 1 John 4:2; show us the Christ whose humanity of necessity belongs to His Person forming thus an essential part of this unfathomable union of Godhead and Manhood.
1 Tim. 2:5, 6; 1 John 1:7; Acts 20:28; Heb. 1:2, 3 present the Christ whose work is the work of a Person of infinite value, yet it is the work of Christ as “the Man Christ Jesus.”
Heb. 2:17; 4:15; Rom. 1:3; 2 Tim. 2:8; tell us of the Christ who was made as man in all things like to His brethren, having a real human nature.
John 5:21-27;17:24; Eph. 4:9, 10; Col. 1:15-20 contemplate the Christ who, Himself a Divine Person, yet receives Divine attributes and glory as Man.
In each of these important respects, the tract presents a view of Christ professedly as Man in which these characteristics of the true Christ are wanting. If we sum up its contents as far as we have examined them in the light of these Scriptures, we shall find that it gives us; –
1. A view of Christ, in which Manhood is not indissolubly and inscrutably united with Godhead, (a union which Mr. R. calls error,) but, instead, into which the very thought of His Divinity would be an intrusion, as “it is utterly impossible to introduce the idea of Deity in its proper character and attributes.” It tells us that “Christ’s Manhood had its unique and blessed character from God,” but in His Person, as become Man, the Godhead could not bodily dwell, as this necessarily involves humanity united to Godhead in His Person, which we are told, is “confusion” between His “divine Person” and His “human condition.”
2. A view of Christ, without real humanity, for though He is spoken of “as man,” yet He is not man personally, but “a divine Person assuming human condition,” who, as to His Person, might have an existence apart from that condition. There is no real humanity – no individuality as a man.
3. A view of Christ, which disqualifies Him for the work of redemption, for as “the unity of the Person”– “God and Man in one Person” – is denied, He –“the Man Christ Jesus” – cannot give Himself, but can only, as a Divine Person, lay down that which is outside His Person.
4. A view of Christ, without real human nature, for as nature is inseparable from “person,” and the tract not only denies that “He is in person something which He was not before,” but also virtually limits His humanity to condition, it is clear that there is no place in this system, for a real human nature of Christ which, if He has taken, is of necessity united with Godhead in His Person. For a mere condition has not true nature.
5. A view of Christ, in which His receiving as Man Divine attributes and glory is denied, for on the contrary it is stated that “His place as man” is “distinct and apart from the glory and attributes which belong only to God, and in which Christ has part as Himself being a Divine Person.”
The first denies the inscrutability of Christ’s Person: the second degrades His humanity: the third depreciates the value of His work: the fourth destroy s His Priestly service and the fifth despoils His taken glory. The reality of His Manhood, with all its mighty consequences, is forfeited in the vain endeavor to sustain this charge of confusion “between person and condition.”
Let it be owned that He has taken Manhood into union with Godhead in His own Person, and these precious truths, which this tract sets aside in all their Divine reality take their true place in relation thereto. The Person of Christ is that upon which everything turns. The truth concerning His Person – His whole Person – is of paramount importance. This truth the tract refuses, for the reader must not be misled by the term “the whole truth of His Person.”
This is not, for the author of the tract, the same as the truth of His whole Person, as the latter necessarily involves “the idea of the unity of the Person.” For it is by reason of the union of Godhead with manhood in the Person of Christ that the question of the unity of His Person can be raised.
The maintenance of the truth of Christ’s real and true humanity as essential to His Person establishes the inscrutability of that Person: it exalts His humanity: it magnifies His work: it preserves intact His Priestly service and it recognizes His glory as Man. But we will examine each of these points in detail.
{1.} First, then, as to the inscrutability of Christ’s Person. Is not the mystery of the incarnation the truth of the Person of Christ? We have seen that it is denied, first, by substituting in its stead, two aspects of Christ as man, and then, by refusing to acknowledge that He became “in person something which He was not before.” Thus by reducing His humanity to “human condition,” the way is paved for the appalling assertion that
the idea of the unity of the Person in the sense asserted is not found.
We quite allow that it is not found in the doctrine of this tract, and for the very simple reason that, from beginning to end, it is a careful and premeditated denial thereof. All possible pains have been taken to destroy the truth which alone makes the doctrine of the “unity of the Person” of Christ intelligible. It has no possible sense unless He be both “God and man in One Person.” If He did not really and truly become Man in Being and Nature and Person when He took part of blood and flesh, then to talk of the “absolute unity of His Person, or “of Jehovah, come down in the Person of Jesus” is a delusion and a snare –it is a deceit of Satan; and the teaching of J. N. D. which clearly insists upon this unity – this “absolute unity” – is false. We insist upon this. If He – the Word – in becoming flesh, did not become “in person something which He was not before,” then to talk of the Word of God “bringing together God and Man in the Person of Christ” is in the highest degree reprehensible. It cannot be too strongly condemned. This is the point at issue: let it be sharply defined. We wish no misunderstanding of what is stated here. We have no motive for stating our belief upon these all-important questions in any way obscurely. Either Scripture teaches that the Person of Christ is incomprehensible by reason of His having taken human nature into union with His Divine Being, or it does not so teach. If it does so teach, then, without gainsaying, it is “a question of unity of a Person,” the denial of this tract notwithstanding. We affirm unhesitatingly that it does so teach, and that in no uncertain manner.
What and who is it that God has inscrutably hidden from the creature but the manner of the union of the Divine and the human in the Person of Christ become Man – the knowledge of the Son Himself? God, as it were, says, I have so covered up with an impenetrable veil the One who became Man for My glory, that no creature mind shall be able to solve the mystery of His Person, or to divide His Person as Man from His Person as God. It is of this mystery of the incarnation that J. N. D. has said
the Divine glory of His Being is maintained and secured, when He became incarnate, by the incomprehensibility of His Person.”
And again he says, in distinguishing His Person incarnate from His Deity alone
But the gospel of John gives us large communications on this humiliation of Christ. His Godhead shines in every page of all the gospels, but John, as everyone knows, in a peculiar way gives us the Person of Christ – the Word made flesh.
This is no mere assumption of human condition by a Divine Person. It is incarnation, with all its infinite and divine depths of mystery and meaning.
In John 6:51, the Lord distinctly presents Himself – a Person – when He says to the Jews “I am the living bread which came down from heaven.” Yet immediately He turns to His humanity and adds “the bread that I will give is My flesh.” To which will the writer deny the truth of “person”? To which will he put his limitation of “condition”? If to the latter, which is according to the teaching of his tract, what will he say to the former? The bread is His flesh, i.e., what He became, and yet to this He unites intentionally the truth of His “Person” when He says of Himself as Man in this world, and only as such, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven.” Will Mr. R. assert that His humanity came from heaven? If he will not, then there is but one explanation, and that is, that here we have presented, as another has said of it, “The object of faith, but still the Person of the Lord, but as Man, the bread came down from heaven.” This fundamental truth of Christianity the tract before us denies.
Let Mr. R., holding as he does that Christ’s humanity is not (as become incarnate) essential to His Person – that He who was God as to His Person did not also become as to His “person” man when He assumed “human condition,” see if he can explain, that which is with Divine wisdom, designedly put before the unbelieving Jews in this chapter. If his theory is true it is the “confusion of thought between person and condition,” which he deprecates in his tract. Will he then dare attempt even to distinguish them here? much less separate them as he, in effect, does in his teaching there.
Here in this Scripture we have that which is true of Himself “in person,” so thoroughly identified with His humanity, i.e., with what He became, that to attempt even to define them would be fatal to the truth of His Person.
Yet this is the “confusion” which the writer of the tract decries as derogatory to the truth. It is to this truth – to His Person as thus become incarnate that Matt. 11:27, “No one knows the Son but the Father,” applies. This truth of the union of Divinity and humanity in Christ’s Person is the very essence of the mystery of the incarnation. The denial of it forms the source from whence flow the false teachings as to the Person of Christ, which are presented in this tract. Teachings which deny the Christ of God.
The same unbelief that led the Lord’s hearers in John 6, who looked at the human apart from the Divine, to question “how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven”? {John 6:42} leads Mr. R. also to stumble at the truth of His Person, and, by denying that His humanity is what he became “in person,” to separate the human from the Divine. It is not difficult to show the common origin and character of these opinions. Each originates in the unbelief of the human heart refusing to own the wondrous grace that God – the Son – could become in His Person man. So, to unbelief then it was impossible to acknowledge the Divine relationship of the One who was a man in their midst. His humanity degraded Him to their minds and they refused to own His Divine claims. Unbelief now discovers the same difficulty in respect to His humanity, and sees in the fact of His becoming (“in person”) Man, (thus being God and man, but in one Person), a thought very derogatory “to the truth of the Son,” and as a consequence refuses to own His real humanity.
The stumbling-block to the human mind that lies in the way of the acknowledgment of the truth of the mystery of His Person, is the same now as then: only then no refinements of thought could possibly succeed in inducing His hearers to doubt the reality of His humanity. But now as then unbelief whilst professing to be able to judge of what is suited to God in respect to the One who “came down from heaven,” only exposes the utter incompetency of the human mind to discover the Son Himself become MAN.
For each of us the question is again repeated “Doth this offend you?” Faith bows before this inexplicable mystery refusing to attempt to look within. The suggestion of unbelieving intellectuality is “This is a hard saying: who can hear it?”
Faith neither seeks to understand the mystery of the Person of the Lord, nor, because it is incomprehensible does it refuse its acceptance. It bows unreservedly, yea with adoration, to the Person thus presented in the Word of God. Unbelief refuses a Person both Divine and human – “God and man in One Person.”
The Scripture, “I am the bread which came down from heaven” , can be received only by accepting the truth that, as His humanity is essential to His Person, so His Divinity is essential to His Person: and, as His Divinity is essential to His Person, so His humanity is essential to His Person. This truth meets thus, on the one hand, the unbelief of the Jews, as also of Unitarians, and, on the other, the objections of this tract. “He was God, He became Man”; – “truly though miraculously, born as man. To those who could understand His name it was Jehovah the Savior.”
Having thus seen that Scripture establishes the received doctrine of “orthodoxy” as to the inscrutability of Christ’s Person, we will now look at the four remaining views of Christ presented in this tract, in the light of the truth which the Word of God has thus cast upon them.
{2.} That the second view stands or falls with the first is evident. To acknowledge the truth of the mystery of the incarnation is necessarily to own His humanity in its proper position as essential to His Person, as having now become Man. To us the fact that He became “in person” man (i.e., by taking manhood into union with Himself) is, next to the atonement, which indeed it underlies, the most precious and fundamental truth of Christianity. To Mr. R. the thought of “person” attached to what Christ became, is “very derogatory to the truth of the Son.” To us His Person exalts His humanity: to him Christ’s humanity would degrade His Person, if united therewith. What then will he say to the persistent identification of His humanity with His Person which is characteristic of John 6? We will leave the answering of this question to him. He has the Word of the living God to deal with: rather would we have it that it dealt with him, manifesting to him, even now, the awful depths of the evil doctrines to which he has been instrumental, in the hands of Satan, in beguiling saints of God.
{3.} In the third view of Christ which we have seen the tract presents, we find that the Person of Christ having been touched, His work suffers incalculable loss thereby.
As we have learnt the truth from Scripture, it is, that He Himself the Eternal Son, having, by the assumption of Manhood into personal union with Himself, thus become MAN, thereby effectually gives the value of His whole Person to His redemption work. He lays down His life (not a mere humanity of “condition”) – a Person who is both God and Man: Man really and necessarily, yet He is also God. “It is written” in the Word of God, that “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” And again “it is written” of “the church of God which He hath purchased with His own blood,” or blood of His Own {Acts 20:28}. Who can separate Divinity and humanity here without detracting from the infinite value of redemption? Who will have the temerity to assert that the One here spoken of is not, as to His Person, God? But Scripture, elsewhere, says it was “the Man Christ Jesus Who gave Himself a ransom for all” {1 Tim . 2:6}. Who then will deny that this One is not, as to His Person, Man?
Yet this is the same work and accomplished by the same Person. Restore the truth that Christ became, as to His Person, Man, thus being both God and Man, but One Christ, and all the dignity and value of His Deity attaches to His work as Man: for “it is Man who offers Him self.” It is “this Person who died for our sins,” and “this Person” the doctrine of the tract refuses. It knows not a Christ who is personally Man. It knows only an appearance – “in such wise as that He can be viewed objectively as man,” and HE HIMSELF is separated from His Manhood, so that His work as “the Man Christ Jesus” is destroyed.
In connection with this subject Mr. R. made a most remarkable statement at Quemerford, for in explanation of a remark by “J. P.” that “Christ died,” and having doubtless perceived that he has by his doctrine laid himself open to the charge of destroying the death of a Person, he said
He is designated in that way as Christ, but Scripture says we are reconciled to God by the death of His Son. He took a condition in which He could die. It was that Person who died, and it was the fact of His being that Person that gave all the value to it.
What a mixture of that which is true and that which is false we have here. For surely if He were not the Son of God His death would be valueless: that is the truth.
But He must be a man in order to suffer for men, and to represent men. And this He was.
Not as to “condition” only, in contrast to “person” or being, for this is where this teaching is false. No!
He was really and truly MAN, born of a woman as we are – not as to the source nor as to the manner of His conception, of which we are not yet speaking, but as to the reality of His existence as man. HE WAS REALLY AND TRULY A HUMAN BEING.
It is Himself, as He was, a man on earth – the PERSON whom I should have met every day had I lived at that time in Judea, or in Galilee.
Thus does another speak of His person as man, “in the nature He has taken in grace,” and to limit this to the correlative truth of “condition” is to deny the Christ of God. To say that J. N. D. means “condition” here, would be utter folly, or worse. We learn from Scripture that the act of a Divine Person assuming a mere form or condition of humanity and laying down this form to take it again would be valueless in accomplishing redemption, for it would not be the act of a Man. See Heb. 2:14. The death of a Man, the resurrection of a Man, a Divine Person withal, but a Man who has triumphed over Satan as the seed of the woman, can alone cancel guilt and bring eternal glory to God. If He be only a Divine Person – the Son of God – in human condition, and does not also become Man in Nature and Being and Person when He takes the body prepared for Him, then He is in no real sense the seed of the woman who could go down into death, to receive in His own Person the wages of sin. The sword that awoke against Jehovah’s Fellow, awoke against the man Christ Jesus: but to speak of a Divine Person in the mere condition of humanity as THAT MAN is useless, for the effect of such teaching is to reduce the humanity of the Redeemer Son of God to a form of humanity such as that in which Jehovah appeared to Abraham, and the reality of Christ’s death is lost. It is a Divine Person laying down human condition: and it is nothing more. There is no real death. It is utterly impossible that One Who is, as to His Person, simply Divine and not also human, “should taste death” for sin. Fallen man lay under the sentence of death.
Human condition alone cannot suffice. It is vain to present a Christ merely called man, for the sentence of death had to be met for sinners, and by Man. Sins were to be atoned for, sin to be put away. The work of redemption was a reality, and the blessed Savior, the Man who wrought it was a real Person
The MAN Christ Jesus; who gave HIMSELF a ransom for all {1 Tim. 2:6}.
We see no such Christ in Scripture as Mr. R. presents.
But we see Jesus, who was made some little inferior to angels on account of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; so that by the grace of God He should taste death for everything {Heb. 2:9}.
Again
By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death {Rom. 5:12}.
Such is the offence. The act of favor – the grace of God –is also “by the one man Jesus Christ.” He was as truly man as was Adam; but Adam, though innocent, fell, and thereby brought in sin; Christ, who knew no sin “Appeared to put away sin by HIS sacrifice.” And again we read in the Word of God
For since by man came death, by man also resurrection of those that are dead {1 Cor. 15:21}.
To reason as at Quemerford, that the Scripture “we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son,” excludes the thought of His humanity pertaining to His Person, and makes it the act of a Person to whom Deity alone essentially attached, is to set aside the reality of the incarnation entirely: for as to His conception and birth as Man, as well as in His eternal relationship with the Father He was to be called the Son of God, as Luke 1 {35} plainly show s.
That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God
was spoken of His humanity, as conceived by the Holy Ghost. So indissoluble and inscrutable is this union. But it is plainly seen that the incarnation in this sense has no place in Mr. R’s system. On the one side is a Divine Person in a condition of humanity: on the other God Himself – the Son – become Man in Person. Will saints reject the truth of the latter for the unreality of the former?
If Christ is not personally MAN there is no redemption.
But to return to our consideration of the tract.
{4.} Thus, again, in connection with His Priestly service. If not Man therein, and that, too, not merely in “human condition” but in Person and Being and Nature He is unfit for the office of Priest: one who can have compassion, who can feel and sympathize, coming “near to the miseries of men” as one has said. The teaching of the tract makes it impossible that the Christ therein presented can be such an One. For, as Nature is inseparable from “person,” it is plain that to deny that He is “in person” man, is to deny that His humanity is true human nature. And this tract, although it speaks of “Christ’s Manhood” and of His human “form or condition” yet consistently with the system it does not mention His human nature. This fatal omission is necessary in order to support his charge of confusion “between person and condition,” which involves the refusal of humanity in Being and Nature and Person; otherwise it falls to the ground.
Another has said of the Epistle to the Hebrews
Ch. 2 while showing Christ made higher than the heavens, insists on His being made like unto His brethren – truly a man in flesh and blood so as to feel” [a humanity of “condition” alone could not FEEL] as a man for the saints in their trial. Ch. 4 on the other hand specially looks at Him as gone up on high, a High Priest who has gone up through the Heavens, and speaks only of ‘was’ as to His suffering, being tempted.
Now a humanity of “condition” alone could not be TEMPTED, it MUST be a Person who is tempted, and clearly, if Christ is not “in person something which He was not before” – if in Person He is not man – then He could not be tempted. It rests with Mr. R. to tell us who that Person was who was thus tempted. He merely presents a divine Person “viewed as acting in regard to His form or condition, divine or human”; but if Christ be only a Divine Person in human condition He could not suffer, being tempted, nor would He possess a real human nature to feel for us. It must be a Person who feels – a real man in nature and being – and who can sympathize.
Thus it is with Jesus, when exercising His priesthood. He is in every sense beyond the reach of pain and trial but He is man; and not only has He the human nature which in time suffered grief, but He experienced the trials a saint has to go through more fully than any of ourselves.
He has Himself been through this scene of sin and sorrow tempted – a real Man – in like manner as we are, sin apart; but He resisted all the attacks and advances of the enemy, (for Satan found nothing in Him that answered to his wiles) and He suffered in thus meeting evil. He was as really tempted as Adam: hence was as really man. This the tract in principle denies. Let it be owned that He also became Man in Person, (as well as being God) “and was Man to be qualified for it,” and the truth of His having been tempted is re-established. Thus
He would become a priest, being able, through His life of humiliation and trial here below, to sympathize with His own in all their conflicts and difficulties.
For “A human heart feels it, and Jesus had a human heart.” But to deny that He became “in person” man, is to set aside the truth that as a person, He was tempted, and suffered, and feels. And this the tract does.
Having thus seen how the limitation of Christ’s humanity to “condition” compromises the truth in regard to the inscrutability of His Person: to the reality of His humanity: to the perfection of His work: and to His qualification for the function of High Priest: we have still to see the manner in which it touches His glory as Man.
{5.} We will now point out in what way the denial of Christ’s humanity as that which He became “in Person,” i.e., the denial of Godhead and Manhood in One Person renders it a necessity also to deny to Him as Man Divine attributes and glory. It is precisely the same as in t he previous view – a Person is needed – human “condition” is not enough. His place of exaltation as Man, is by virtue of redemption; which, having accomplished in first descending “as man even into the darkness of the grave and of death”;
He takes his place as man above the heavens.
Glorious truth, which belongs at the same time to the union of the divine and human natures in the person of Christ, and to the work of redemption accomplished by suffering on the cross!
Glorious truth indeed: and yet more glorious Person. But this system has no place for the One “who was made some little inferior to angels on account of the suffering of death,” and who is therefore “crowned with glory and honor.” This truth can only apply to one who is man personally – the Son of Man – and it is spoken of a Person – Jesus. If it be applied to a Divine Person who chose to assume human form (as God did of old) but who did not become personally man, it would be virtually to say, not only that God could be less than God, but that He could be less than the creature. It describes the relative position in nature and being of men towards angels – “Some little inferior” – and “Jesus,” as Man, personally enters into it in grace, thus to take hold by the hand, not of angels, but of the seed of Abraham. The Spirit of God delights to dwell thus upon His humiliation; it is the basis upon which rest the glories of His Person as Man and Son of Man.
For this He was made “inferior,” He became man in nature and being, that through death He might take His place over all. But is this derogatory to His Person? Far be the thought. The mind of man cannot measure these divine truths. It mars everything it touches: and reduces that which speaks of the most marvelous grace, to its own measure and its own folly. Mere human “condition” will not do. He must be man in nature and “person.” For it is evident that if as Man He receives Divine attributes and glory, and exercises Divine prerogatives – if as Man He acts and wills from Himself: gives life, raises the dead executes judgment, receives the kingdom, and delivers it again to the Father, then it must of necessity be as a Person that He does so: for to thus act is the evidence of a Person.
Hence the denial that Christ is “in person” both God and Man, compels the author to do violence to this truth also and to imply that as Man He has not Divine glory and attributes. A divine Person acting in regard to a human form or condition, said to be His, but in no way essential to His Person, is neither the Christ we have learnt in humiliation, and suffering, and death, nor the Man whom we, by faith, see now at God’s right hand “crowned with glory and honor.” It is not the Christ who was a real, true Man, in absolutely holy humanity surely, but yet of Israel (the seed of David) “as according to flesh, the Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever.” This Christ Mr. R. distinctly denies in his tract. He knows no such Person in his system as the Christ who is both “God and Man in One Person.”
The reasoning upon the Lord’s names and titles, on the last page, is thoroughly misleading. For although on the surface the illustrations used are apparently parallel and similar, they are actually very far from being so. To reason from ordinary human beings and titles up to the Lord whose Person is unfathomable, leads to deductions of the most serious character. The premises may be correct enough perhaps if applied only to us: they are radically wrong when applied to the Lord, and result in the partition of His Person. It is, indeed, but another result of the logical application of the principle which separates His humanity from His Person. In becoming “The Queen,” “The Colonel,” “The Doctor,” the person whose dignity or office or profession is thus described is in no way affected. You can say of such “before she was Queen,” or “before he was Colonel,” or “before he was Doctor,” and you do no violence to the person of whom you thus speak for the title is not essential to, or is not, in the words of the tract, “descriptive of the person,” who is so designated.
But this is not so with Christ’s Person and names. Herein lies the immeasurable difference. Another has said upon this
His Person comes out strikingly in such passages as “The Son of Man who is in heaven” . . . John distinctly uses it in the way and for the reason mentioned in connection with His Person – the MAN down here, yet “The Son of Man who is in heaven”
{John 3:13}.
This has no possible meaning if the name “Son of Man” does not describe the Person of Christ. Who will attempt to explain this away?
The titles “The Christ” and “Son of Man” not only describe the offices He fills as such, but they also describe “the person that holds the office.” In becoming man and assuming that nature which alone could make those titles good, He attaches them essentially to His Person. If this were not so, the passage “The Son of Man who is in heaven” {John 3:13}, which brings His humanity and His Divinity so inseparably together in His Person, would have no force whatever. We repeat the words of another, “John uses it in the way and for the reason mentioned in connection with His Person – the MAN down here, yet ‘The Son of Man who is in heaven.’” “The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,” yet Man down here in this world. Again we repeat, “His Person comes out strikingly in such passages as ‘The Son of Man who is in heaven.’” The name describes His Person. To deny this is to strike at the integrity of His Person, and whilst this denial fits in with, and is necessary to uphold, the teaching of the tract, it is contrary to the Word of God, and subversive of the truth. We may say “before He became man,” because here “man” is not the Person He is but the nature He took.
The teaching of the tract is not only in flat contradiction to the writer we have quoted, but it makes utter nonsense of Scripture: for if the Scriptures
The Son of man came to minister {Mark 10:45}
What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before {John 6:62}
The Son of man which is in heaven {John 3:13}
do not involve “any question of the unity of the Person” of Christ, why then did the Lord Himself use the second Scripture quoted for the express purpose of emphasizing the truth of His Person which had stumbled His hearers in John 6? But the teaching of this chapter – its special and distinctive doctrine – is ignored, and replaced by a Christ whose Divinity alone is essential to His Person. This is the sum and substance of the entire tract.
The Christ therein set forth is a false Christ, and bears no resemblance to the Person presented in the Word of God by the Holy Ghost, whose one object is to honor that blessed Person become Man. From beginning to end the tendency of the tract is to depreciate the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ under the guise of maintaining and presenting the truth of His Person. It is true the term “the Word becoming flesh” is used, but the relation in which it stands explains the sense in which it is used, namely, as an equivalent expression to “a divine Person assuming human condition.” The REALITY of it – a PERSON becoming that which He was not before, i.e., BECOMING Man – BECOMING flesh, is utterly refused, and concerning it the assertion is made that “This is not the teaching of Scripture, nor do I think it can be entertained.”
Let not the inspired warnings of the Apostles be unheeded
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits if they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ come in flesh is of God; and every spirit which does not confess Jesus Christ come in flesh is not of God: and this is that [power] of the antichrist, of which ye have heard that it comes, and now it is already in the world. Ye are of God, children, and have overcome them, because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.
They are of the world; for this reason they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. We are of God he that knows God hears us ; he who is not of God does not hear us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error (1 John 4:1-6).
There shall be also among you false teachers, who shall bring in by the bye destructive heresies, and deny the master that bought them (2 Pet. 2:1).
For the time shall be when they will not bear sound teaching; but according to their own lusts will heap up to themselves teachers, having an itching ear; and they will turn away their ear from the truth, and will have turned aside to fables (2 Tim. 4:3, 4).
See that there be no one who shall lead you away as a prey through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the teaching of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead BODILY (Col. 2:8, 9).
But ye, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, awaiting the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life (Jude 20-21).
May saints be aroused, and see to it that they are not robbed of Christ in all that He is as a real, true Man, yet God withal; the expression bodily of the substance of the Godhead. Inscrutable in Person as incarnate, having united Godhead and Manhood: human as well as Divine as to His Person, having become (“in person”) Man, and thus God and Man, but in One Person: accomplishing the work of redemption, as the Man who united in His own Person all the value of His Godhead with the humanity that He took that He might give Himself up: exercising Priestly service towards us in virtue of having taken human nature, in which He could suffer and be tempted, and by means of which He is “able to sympathize with our infirmities” receiving Divine attributes as Man, even in humiliation and going back as the risen Man into the Divine glory.
The “doctrine of Christ” is departed from where these truths are denied. They rest upon the truth concerning the Person of Christ, which this teaching subverts. The issue is clear. It is not a question of “confusion of thought as between person and condition,” for there is none. It is a question of person OR condition. It is a question whether “In a word, it was the power of God present in grace in the person of the Son of God taking part in the NATURE, and interesting Himself in the lot, of a being who had departed from Him.”It is a question of whether “GOD HAS BECOME MAN.” The one underlying principle of the tract is to deny that He has.
It may be well to point out here that the sequence of Mr. R.’s system in his teachings on eternal life and the humanity of Christ is clear: as is also their common origin and disastrous results.
What marks the first is
1. The separation of eternal life from the Person of the Son.
2. The limitation of eternal life to a condition characterizing Him as man.
What marks the other is
1. The separation of His Manhood from the Person of Christ.
2. The limitation of His Manhood to the condition of humanity He assumed.
They originate, however little the instrument may be conscious thereof, in the deadly hostility of the enemy to Christ, and they subvert the truth of His Person. The Person of Christ is the sum and substance of all grace and blessing, only His work was needed for our participation therein, God being glorified thereby and all that was in the way, through sin, removed. But if His Person – His whole Person, in all its glorious integrity of absolute Deity and real and spotless human nature be infringed, then His work is naught – the blessing void.
The denial that He is in Person “that eternal life” is to remove the scriptural basis – “I am the bread of life” –upon which through death, He imparts life to us. “That eternal life which was with the Father” {1 John 1:2} was a Man here in this world, in order not only to show, but to communicate life – His own life – to men. Thus even as to the communication of eternal life to us, the truth is that He, Himself, is it, or we have it not; for except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you {John 6:53}.
But if separated from His Person the flesh and blood are valueless. All hangs upon His Person. This Person who had life in Himself as the Son become Man could quicken whom He would. It is He Himself – the last Adam, who is a quickening Spirit {1 Cor. 15:45}. But with Himself personally this system allow s no link.
The denial that He is in Person Man, as well as God robs His work – the work of “the Man Christ Jesus” – of all its atoning value by separating it from His Person. By His Manhood alone the work of redemption could not be accomplished. His Godhead is needed to give value thereto. It is the work of His whole Person: the infinite value of His Godhead Being in a taken nature – God and Man – being essential to the working out of atonement. He brings all the value of all that He is – He in whom was life – into His humanity. This glorious Person – the Son of God – the Man Christ Jesus – unites all the infinite worth of His Divine Being with the ability which was required for one who offers Himself to God as a sacrifice in death to accomplish redemption. He gives Himself up in all the infinite meetness and holy perfections of his inscrutable Person “for the putting away of sin by His sacrifice.”
The two errors mentioned, undermine the truth of life and propitiation so blessedly brought together in 1 John 4:9, 10, “God sent His only begotten Son . . . that we might live through Him,” and “God . . . sent His Son a propitiation for our sins.” The whole fabric of the glad tidings is overthrown with the denial of these truths. The Person of Christ having been touched nothing is left untouched.
Are saints willing to give up the truth of the PERSON of Christ – His whole Person – for the systematized error of men? or will they not rather awake to the significance of this shameless rejection of Divine truth, and in a day when men “will not endure sound doctrine,” be found through God’s mercy among those who “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints?” “Philalethes” {A. C. Ord}
Appendix
To view the Lord Jesus as Man in all the perfections and beauties of His ways as such in the pathway He trod in this scene, or in the varied offices He fills, and the place of glory He takes as Man according to the counsels of God cannot be too largely insisted on. But this raises no question of His Person, if it is the Spirit of God who directs our thoughts. The very fact of such questions being raised here should lead those who raise them to judge that their minds were leading them astray, and cause them to pause and judge their folly. His Person in itself is altogether outside the sphere of our meditations whether we contemplate Him in His Godhead or His Manhood. Not of course by this do we mean His Person in all its infinite value and beauty and grace and perfections; but His Person doctrinally, i.e., the truth of who He is and what He is in Being and Nature whether as God or as Man. This is not a subject which can be divided or defined or comprehended as J. N. D. has written
How beyond all our wonder and praise is the Person of the blessed Lord! As an Apostle could say and more because he knew it better ‘Great is the mystery’ . . . No man knows the Son yet He lets us see that He is that which no man knows.
As to His ways and as to His relationships, in the offices He fills and in the activities of His grace, in His sufferings and His sorrows, in His joys and His glories, we may well be engaged with Him as Man or as God.
We may look at Him as the weary Man at Sychar’s well, grieved with the heartlessness of His people, wearied with the journey His love must needs take in order to reach a poor sinful woman, outside the limits of God’s earthly dealings, but do we view Him “apart from what He is as God”? or do we not necessarily recall to our souls the truth – wondrous beyond description as we see Him there – of who He is and what He is as God? To abstract what He is as God from our view is to reduce the picture to a bare cold study of the mind: the heart cannot thus afford to lose Him for a single moment, when we are near Him. We see Him there a Man – weary, thirsty, hungry, grieved at heart with the indifference of His people yet even then finding His joy as Man in making God known to a wretched and unsatisfied heart – making Himself known –the One who could say “If thou knewest . . . who it is.” Adorable Person! become a Man that He might thus reveal Himself to such poor sinners. We contemplate Him there we worship that One – that Man who is God.
We may gaze upon Him a Man in the home at Bethany, that sweet retreat for His aching heart: retiring from the coldness of the world He made and into which He had come in grace – from His own people to whom He had come according to the special love He had towards them –retiring hated and unknown – to enjoy for a moment the company of those He loved, who gathered there, and whose love to Him He so fully appreciated {John 12:1-3}– He the lonely Man in a contrary scene. Yet what fills to overflowing our cup of joy and praise as we too, in spirit enter into the sweetness now of that which then filled Mary’s heart? Is it not the wondrous yet unknown depths of His peerless Person which cause us, together with her to expend upon Him the worship of our hearts, His worthiness filling the house and ascending to the Father?
the fragrance of His Person – the Man of Sorrows retreating into the fellowship of those who through grace loved Him – that gracious One – the ever blessed God come down thus to make us know Him in such a manner in order by the Spirit to produce and draw out this love towards Himself: this love which formed the holy atmosphere at Bethany, as indeed of heaven itself.
What is it gives surpassing beauty to that scene in Simon’s house, where we see the Lord as Man partaking of the hospitality of the one who had invited Him? Do we see it if we close our eyes to what He is as God? or as we see the woman of the city finding a heart she could trust –finding One she could approach and who would not spurn the love of such an one – would not gather up His garments as we in our self-righteousness and exterior carefulness would have done – do we not of necessity remember that that heart was the heart of God – that One was God Himself? The mighty fact that He, the thrice Holy One, could thus draw a poor vile sinner to Himself, restful in the confidence of the love He had Himself produced gives the marvelous charm, in the eyes of those who have in any measure tasted such grace, to this Divine picture of the heart of Jesus.
We may view Him as Man asleep on a pillow: as before we have seen Him, wearied with His journey sitting on the well. What perfections shine in all! Was ever Man, amid such surroundings, like this? Absolutely man yet so entirely dependent upon God that He can sleep restfully amid the storm of wind and waves: perfect man utterly cast upon God with no care of circumstances whatever they m ay be. But is this view complete? Do we shut out the other side – the background as it were of this lovely picture of human dependence and of Divine power?
Should we gain here (even if we could have it) by taking a view of Christ “as man, distinct and apart from what He is as God”? or shall we not find infinite beauty imparted to the scene by seeing Who He is – what He is, as God? the Creator, the Upholder of all things, Who can still the storm, saying “Peace be still,” yet having taken the place of man – “firstborn of every creature” – in that place trusts God unreservedly, to keep Him in all His ways moving not a finger for Himself, though how ready to exert His power to remove the faithless fears of His own.
See Him a Man in the wilderness tempted of Satan.
Fully tested as Man in every respect (sin apart), in the scene of the first man’s utter failure and ruin. In nature and “in person” man too, or the testing were incomplete and wanting, yea impossible. There really and truly man: and found absolutely perfect as Man: subject, dependent obedient. Living by every w ord that proceeded from God’s mouth. Not a movement of will of His own. But who is He who is thus exposed? Who is He who has thus taken voluntarily, that God may be glorified, this place of unparalleled testing and trial? What mere creature dare expose himself thus? Who is there amongst the most exalted who could do more than be preserved himself through obedience in his own place? None! It is God who is there – there a Man – and as a Man. But He is God –the Son, who had said, “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.” And the recollection of this gives it its perfection.
We may learn of Him as Man when we view Him as the perfect servant – the subject Son, here in this scene of proud self-will – a self-will that rejected the lowly Jesus.
In the midst of it all, in perfect submission, He says “I thank Thee, O, Father,” even for this, “because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes” – “for so it seemed good in Thy sight.” Rejected, He was to give, and delights to give, rest to poor, heavy-laden, burdened sinners: thus, too, show the character of the yoke which was His – a yoke of perfect willing service to the Father: doing only His will and delighting to do it, though it led in such a path. What yoke of law could cause the soul to delight therein? but this is the yoke of a Person who wins our poor hearts, and making the Father known, makes His fellowship ours.
What a Person! With title to all, yet the rejected one – the servant Son: delighting to do the Father’s will if thereby not “the wise and prudent,” but “babes” might be brought into the same place of favor, and relationships, and subjection, that was His, as Man. But even such, lowly –rejected – Servant – whatever the place which, according to the counsels of God and in grace He had taken, how beautiful to see the jealousy of the Father as to His Person – He “the Son,” whom though thus come down – yea because thus come down – “NO MAN KNOWS BUT THE FATHER.” Glorious Person! Philosophy and vain deceit are powerless, where the truth concerning Himself holds the mind in subjection.
We add a few extracts from The Son of God, J. G. Bellett, 1891 Edition, that it may be seen that the truth Mr. R. sets aside by his teaching has been insisted upon as fundamental truth, in the very language he refuses, by more than J. N. D., and thus to show also that no forced interpretation has been made in our quotations, as if to bolster up a “creed” which only unintelligent “orthodoxy” insists upon, and which brethren now passed away rejected as much as F. E. R. In view of the facts it would be impossible, consistently with truth, to take such ground as this; and to continue to do so in face of the multitude of distinct statements, whose unquestionable meaning it is impossible to explain aw ay by any theory of “person and condition” such as the tract supplies, would be to lead to doubt as to the sincerity of those who would thus tamper with the plain meaning of plain words, uttered by men who can no longer contend for the truth which they so dearly prized and so clearly taught.
“The Person in the manger was the same as on the cross. It was ‘God manifest in the flesh’” (p. 63). “He was as truly ‘God manifest in the flesh’ when on the journey to Egypt in His m other’s arms, as when in Gethsemane, in the glory and power of His person, the enemy coming to eat up His flesh stumbled and fell. He was as simply Emmanuel as an Infant in Bethlehem, as He is now at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens” (pp. 71, 72). “The Person is the same throughout, God and man in one Christ” (p. 168). “That Person will be ‘the eternal wonder and ornament of the creation of God.’ Some may own, in general, the manhood and the Godhead in that Person. But we are also to own the full unsullied glory of each of these.
Neither the soul or moral man, nor the temple of the body is to be profaned. The whole man is to be vindicated and honored” (p. 76). “The person of Christ, and therein His human nature, shall be the eternal object of divine glory praise, and worship” (pp. 113, 114). “Faith acquaints itself with this whole path of Jesus. It owns in Him the Son while He tabernacles in the flesh among us; and when His course of humiliation and suffering had ended here, faith owns the once rejected and crucified Man glorified in the heavens – the one Person; God manifested in the flesh here, Man hid in the glory there. As we read of Him and of His blessed wondrous path: ‘God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles believed on in the world, received up into glory’ (1 Tim. 3:16). He was, indeed, very Man and very God in one Person. All depends on this ‘great mystery.’ The death of the cross, would be nothing without it, as all would be nothing without that death” (p. 78). Again Mr. Bellett says, “‘His glorious meetness,’ to use very much the language of another, ‘for all the acts and duties of His mediatory office is resolved into the union of His two natures in the same Person. He who was conceived and born of the Virgin was Emmanuel; that is, ‘God was manifest in the flesh’: ‘Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; . . . and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace’ (Isa. 9). The One who spake to the Jews and as a Man was then only a little more than thirty years old, was ‘before Abraham’ (John 8). The perfect and complete work of Christ in every act of His office, in all that He did, in all that he suffered, in all that ‘He continued to do, is the act and work of His whole person’. This is the mystery” (p. 101). “By the apostle John . . . the Spirit very specially reveals or declares the link between ‘God’ and ‘flesh’ in the person of Jesus” (p. 86). “And this is the mystery: the assumption of flesh and blood by the Son, so that He became the Kinsman of the seed of Abraham, and then the assumption of that wondrous Person into heaven ‘God was manifest in the flesh – received up into glory’” (p. 106). “This is the mystery. It is the same Jesus Emmanuel, the Son, and yet the Kinsman of the seed of Abraham. And here I would say – for there is a call for it – I know we are not to confound the natures in this glorious and blessed One. I fully bow in faith to the truth that the Sanctifier took part of flesh and blood. I avow with my whole soul the true humanity in His person” (p. 109).
And, throughout his whole tract, Mr. R. disavows his belief therein: founding his charge of confusion “as between person and condition,” upon the fact that we maintain “that the truth of Christ’s Person consists in the union in Him of God and man,” that is, the union of the Divine and human natures in the One Person of Christ. He thus absolutely destroys “the true humanity in His person” – “His whole Person,” and denies that “This is the mystery” of the incarnation.
There is no alternative. If the teaching of the tract be true, the doctrines which we have hitherto received are false: but if the quotations from those now passed away express the truth, then alas! the doctrine of Mr. R. (whatever hopes we may tremblingly entertain as to himself) is anti-christian: it is apostasy from the faith.
NOTE. – References to the Synopsis in brackets are to the pages of the most recent copies, when not otherwise marked; but L. E. marks the larger copies of the Third Edition Revised.
We have used quotations from “Notes and Comments” as, although unrevised, they simply bear out the views of their writer as expressed in his revised works.
N. B. – The doctrine of Mr. R. concerning the Person of Christ, as developed in the tract we have considered, does not differ essentially from that which he taught in 1889 and 1890. It was manifest from the commencement of his propaganda that the effort of the enemy was to divide the PERSON of Christ, and it was evident that Mr. R. did not hold the truth of the indivisibility of that Person, in its integrity. The difference is that whilst now he flouts the truth of the union of manhood with Godhead in Christ, he then implied (in the most distinct manner however) that this union, or connection as he then termed it, could not be. He then insisted (see his letter of Dec. 6th, 1889, together with his paper of July 3rd, 1890) that to keep “the true deity the eternal Sonship of the Word” clear and distinct from eternal life, was of all importance, because though the latter “was ever an integral part of the Person of the Eternal Son” (whatever that may mean) it was “such as could according to the divine counsels be connected with manhood”; and thus plainly he implies that Deity could not be thus connected with manhood. Now Mr. R. brands as error this doctrine of the union of Godhead and manhood in Christ’s Person, and boldly teaches (what so many dear saints would not acknowledge that he taught five years ago) that His manhood is not united with His Godhead in His Person. It is only human condition, into which He brought that which was morally of His own Person, so that “Manhood in His case derived its character from what He Himself was.” It is not HIMSELF that we see as the MAN Christ Jesus. The identity of the doctrine which first implied and then asserts that the union of Godhead and Manhood in Christ is not the truth is thus fairly and unquestionably established. But this awful heresy should have been plain to all in Mr. R.’s teaching concerning the babe in the manger; of whom he said that “He was as a babe the exhibition of infancy in its helplessness, for all else, though there, was for the moment veiled.” Here God veiled in flesh is substituted for God manifest in the flesh as the necessary result of a theory which separates His humanity from His Person and replaces this mighty truth by a human condition into which He brings that which can be connected with manhood and is morally of Himself, but which is not Himself. Because the moral qualities which we are told He brought into manhood were for the moment hidden, in Mr. R.’s eyes, God was not there MANIFESTED in the flesh, but he sees only the EXHIBITION of infancy in its helplessness, and ALL else VEILED. Who that owned Christ to be personally Man and whose soul acknowledged “Jesus to b e, in the true full sense, ‘God . . . manifest in the flesh’ – not, as it is commonly slipped out of now also, the manifestation of God in the flesh, but God manifest,” would assert what Mr. R. asserts? NONE. God manifest in the flesh speaks to the soul of the Person of the Son incarnate, the Person of Christ, whole and indivisible, and this Person Mr. R.’s teaching knows not, and knew not five years ago. He knows and he knew a divine Person only, setting forth God morally in human condition, “the manifestation of God in the flesh,” and not God in the Person of the Son taking manhood into union with Himself so as to be God manifest in the flesh in His own Person as Man.