Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 142-145—“Mary was Theotokos, but she was not the mother of Christ's Godhood, but of his humanity. We speak of the blood of God the Son, but it is not as God that he has blood. The hands of the babe Jesus made the worlds, only in the sense that he whose hands they were was the Agent in creation.... Spirit and body in us are not merely put side by side, and insulated from each other. The spirit does not have the rheumatism, and the reverent body does not commune with God. The reason why they affect each other is because they are equally ours.... Let us avoid sensuous, fondling, modes of addressing Christ—modes which dishonor him and enfeeble the soul of the worshiper.... Let us also avoid, on the other hand, such phrases as ‘the dying God’, which loses the manhood in the Godhead.” Charles H. Spurgeon remarked that people who “dear” everybody reminded him of the woman who said she had been reading in “dear Hebrews.”
(c) The constant Scriptural representations of the infinite value of Christ's atonement and of the union of the human race with God which has been secured in him are intelligible only when Christ is regarded, not as a man of God, but as the God-man, in whom the two natures are so united that what each does has the value of both.
1 John 2:2—“he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world,”—as John in his gospel proves that Jesus is the Son of God, the Word, God, so in his first Epistle he proves that the Son of God, the Word, God, has become man; Eph. 2:16-18—“might reconcile them both [Jew and Gentile] in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby; and he came and preached peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh: for through him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father”; 21, 22—“in whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit”; 2 Pet. 1:4—“that through these [promises] ye may become partakers of the divine nature.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:107—“We cannot separate Christ's divine from his human acts, without rending in twain the unity of his person and life.”
(d) It corroborates this view to remember that the universal Christian consciousness recognizes in Christ a single and undivided personality, and expresses this recognition in its services of song and prayer.
The foregoing proof of the union of a perfect human nature and of a perfect divine nature in the single person of Jesus Christ suffices to refute both the Nestorian separation of the natures and the Eutychian confounding of them. Certain modern forms of stating the doctrine of this union, however—forms of statement into which there enter some of the misconceptions already noticed—need a brief examination, before we proceed to our own attempt at elucidation.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:403-411 (Syst. Doct., 3:300-308)—“Three ideas are included in incarnation: (1) assumption of human nature on the part of the Logos (Heb. 2:14—‘partook [pg 686]of ... flesh and blood’; 2 Cor. 5:19—‘God was in Christ’; Col. 2:9—‘in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily’); (2) new creation of the second Adam, by the Holy Ghost and power of the Highest (Rom. 5:14—‘Adam's' transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come’; 1 Cor. 15:22—‘as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive’; 15:45—‘The first man Adam became a living soul, the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit’; Luke 1:35—‘the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee’; Mat. 1:20—‘that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit’); (3) becoming flesh, without contraction of deity or humanity (1 Tim. 3:16—‘who was manifested in the flesh’; 1 John 4:2—‘Jesus Christ is come in the flesh’; John 6:41, 51—‘I am the bread which came down out of heaven.... I am the living bread’; 2 John 7—‘Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh’; John 1:14—‘the word became flesh’). This last text cannot mean: The Logos ceased to be what he was, and began to be only man. Nor can it be a mere theophany, in human form. The reality of the humanity is intimated, as well as the reality of the Logos.”
The Lutherans hold to a communion of the natures, as well as to an impartation of their properties: (1) genus idiomaticum—impartation of attributes of both natures to the one person; (2) genus apotelesmaticum (from ἀποτέλεσμα, “that which is finished or completed,” i. e., Jesus' work)—attributes of the one person imparted to each of the constituent natures. Hence Mary may be called “the mother of God,” as the Chalcedon symbol declares, “as to his humanity,” and what each nature did has the value of both; (3) genus majestaticum—attributes of one nature imparted to the other, yet so that the divine nature imparts to the human, not the human to the divine. The Lutherans do not believe in a genus tapeinoticon, i. e., that the human elements communicated themselves to the divine. The only communication of the human was to the person, not to the divine nature, of the God-man. Examples of this third genus majestaticum are found is John 3:13—“no one hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man, who is in heaven” [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ]; 5:27—“he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man.” Of the explanation that this is the figure of speech called “allæosis,” Luther says: “Allæosis est larva quædam diaboli, secundum cujus rationes ego certe nolim esse Christianus.”
The genus majestaticum is denied by the Reformed Church, on the ground that it does not permit a clear distinction of the natures. And this is one great difference between it and the Lutheran Church. So Hooker, in commenting upon the Son of man's “ascending up where he was before,” says: “By the ‘Son of man’ must be meant the whole person of Christ, who, being man upon earth, filled heaven with his glorious presence; but not according to that nature for which the title of man is given him.” For the Lutheran view of this union and its results in the communion of natures, see Hase, Hutterus Redivivus, 11th ed., 195-197; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 2:24, 25. For the Reformed view, see Turretin, loc. 13, quæst. 8; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:387-397, 407-418.