Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

III. The Union of the two Natures in one Person.

Distinctly as the Scriptures represent Jesus Christ to have been possessed of a divine nature and of a human nature, each unaltered in essence and undivested of its normal attributes and powers, they with equal distinctness [pg 684] represent Jesus Christ as a single undivided personality in whom these two natures are vitally and inseparably united, so that he is properly, not God and man, but the God-man. The two natures are bound together, not by the moral tie of friendship, nor by the spiritual tie which links the believer to his Lord, but by a bond unique and inscrutable, which constitutes them one person with a single consciousness and will,—this consciousness and will including within their possible range both the human nature and the divine.

Whiton, Gloria Patri, 79-81, would give up speaking of the union of God and man; for this, he says, involves the fallacy of two natures. He would speak rather of the manifestation of God in man. The ordinary Unitarian insists that Christ was “a mere man.” As if there could be such a thing as mere man, exclusive of aught above him and beyond him, self-centered and self-moved. We can sympathize with Whiton's objection to the phrase “God and man,” because of its implication of an imperfect union. But we prefer the term “God-man” to the phrase “God in man,” for the reason that this latter phrase might equally describe the union of Christ with every believer. Christ is “the only begotten,” in a sense that every believer is not. Yet we can also sympathize with Dean Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:115—“Alas that a Church that has so divine a service should keep its long list of Articles! I am strengthened more than ever in my opinion that there is only needed, that there only should be, one, viz., ‘I believe that Christ is both God and man.’ ”

1. Proof of this Union.

(a) Christ uniformly speaks of himself, and is spoken of, as a single person. There is no interchange of “I” and “thou” between the human and the divine natures, such as we find between the persons of the Trinity (John 17:23). Christ never uses the plural number in referring to himself, unless it be in John 3:11—“we speak that we do know,”—and even here “we” is more probably used as inclusive of the disciples. 1 John 4:2—“is come in the flesh”—is supplemented by John 1:14—“became flesh”; and these texts together assure us that Christ so came in human nature as to make that nature an element in his single personality.

John 17:23—“I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me”; 3:11—“We speak that which we know, and bear witness of that which we have seen; and ye receive not our witness”; 1 John 4:2—“every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God”; John 1:14—“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us”—he so came in human nature that human nature and himself formed, not two persons, but one person.

In the Trinity, the Father is objective to the Son, the Son to the Father, and both to the Spirit. But Christ's divinity is never objective to his humanity, nor his humanity to his divinity. Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 97—“He is not so much God and man, as God in, and through, and as man. He is one indivisible personality throughout.... We are to study the divine in and through the human. By looking for the divine side by side with the human, instead of discerning the divine within the human, we miss the significance of them both.” We mistake when we say that certain words of Jesus with regard to his ignorance of the day of the end (Mark 13:32) were spoken by his human nature, while certain other words with regard to his being in heaven at the same time that he was on earth (John 3:13) were spoken by his divine nature. There was never any separation of the human from the divine, or of the divine from the human,—all Christ's words were spoken, and all Christ's deeds were done, by the one person, the God-man. See Forrest, The Authority of Christ, 49-100.

(b) The attributes and powers of both natures are ascribed to the one Christ, and conversely the works and dignities of the one Christ are ascribed to either of the natures, in a way inexplicable, except upon the principle that these two natures are organically and indissolubly united in a single person (examples of the former usage are Rom. 1:3 and 1 Pet. [pg 685] 3:18; of the latter, 1 Tim. 2:5 and Heb. 1:2, 3). Hence we can say, on the one hand, that the God-man existed before Abraham, yet was born in the reign of Augustus Cæsar, and that Jesus Christ wept, was weary, suffered, died, yet is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; on the other hand, that a divine Savior redeemed us upon the cross, and that the human Christ is present with his people even to the end of the world (Eph. 1:23; 4:10; Mat. 28:20).

Rom. 1:3—“his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh”; 1 Pet. 3:18—“Christ also suffered for sins once ... being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit”; 1 Tim. 2:5—“one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus”; Heb. 1:2, 3—“his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things ... who being the effulgence of his glory ... when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high”; Eph. 1:22, 23—“put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all”; 4:10—“He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things”; Mat. 28:20—“lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”