§ 6. Errors of Arianism and Naturalism.
And we cannot but think this doctrine far truer, as well as more Orthodox, than the Arianism which so long struggled in the Church for supremacy. That view which supposed that Christ was neither truly man nor truly God, but some high, preëxisting being between the two, appears to us to be the falsest and most unsatisfactory of all the doctrines concerning Christ's person. It separates him more entirely from our sympathies than either of the others. It destroys both his divinity and his humanity, and, by giving us something intermediate, gives us really nothing. It makes his apparent human life a delusion, his temptation unreal, his human sympathies and sorrows deceptive. We think, therefore, that the Church was right in rejecting the Arian doctrine.
We think it was also right in rejecting the Humanitarian doctrine, or that of mere Naturalism. Christ was something more than mere man,—something more than Moses and Elijah,—something more than a man of great religious genius. The peculiarity of Christ was, that he was chosen [pg 209] by God's wisdom, and prepared by God's providence, to be the typical man of the race,—the God-man, in whom the divine Spirit and human soul become one in a perfect union. He was, perhaps, placed, by an exceptional birth, where the first Adam stood,—rescued from inherited depravity, made in the image of God. Then the Spirit was given him without measure. The word of God dwelt in him, and did not merely come to him as a transient influence for a special purpose. Add to this a freely chosen aim of life, and a fidelity which was always about his Father's business, and aiming to finish the work which was given him to do, and we have a being in whom we can see either a manifestation of God or a manifestation of man. The Spirit in Christ was one with God; the soul and body were human.