I. The State of Humiliation.
1. The nature of this humiliation.
We may dismiss, as unworthy of serious notice, the views that it consisted essentially either in the union of the Logos with human nature,—for this union with human nature continues in the state of exaltation; or in the outward trials and privations of Christ's human life,—for this view casts reproach upon poverty, and ignores the power of the soul to rise superior to its outward circumstances.
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 224—“The error of supposing it too humiliating to obey law was derived from the Roman treasury of merit and works of supererogation. Better was Frederick the Great's sentiment when his sturdy subject and neighbor, the miller, whose windmill he had attempted to remove, having beaten him in a lawsuit, the thwarted monarch exclaimed: ‘Thank God, there is law in Prussia!’ ”Palmer, Theological Definition, 79—“God reveals himself in the rock, vegetable, animal, man. Must not the process go on? Must there not appear in the fulness of time a man who will reveal God as perfectly as is possible in human conditions—a man who is God under the limitations of humanity? Such incarnation is humiliation only in the eyes of men. To Christ it is lifting up, exaltation, glory; John 12:32—‘And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself.’ ” George Harris, Moral Evolution, 409—“The divinity of Christ is not obscured, but is more clearly seen, shining through his humanity.”
We may devote more attention to the
A. Theory of Thomasius, Delitzsch, and Crosby, that the humiliation consisted in the surrender of the relative divine attributes.
This theory holds that the Logos, although retaining his divine self-consciousness and his immanent attributes of holiness, love, and truth, surrendered his relative attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, in order to take to himself veritable human nature. According to this view, there are, indeed, two natures in Christ, but neither of these natures is infinite. Thomasius and Delitzsch are the chief advocates of this theory in Germany. Dr. Howard Crosby has maintained a similar view in America.
The theory of Thomasius, Delitzsch, and Crosby has been, though improperly, called the theory of the Kenosis (from ἐκένωσεν—“emptied himself”—in Phil. 2:7), and its advocates are often called Kenotic theologians. There is a Kenosis of the Logos, but it is of a different sort from that which this theory supposes. For statements of this theory, see Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 2:233-255, 542-550; Delitzsch, Biblische Psychologie, 323-333; Howard Crosby, in Bap. Quar., 1870:350-363—a discourse subsequently published in a separate volume, with the title: The True Humanity of Christ, and reviewed by Shedd, in Presb. Rev., April, 1881:429-431. Crosby emphasizes the word “became,” in John 1:14—“and the Word became flesh”—and gives the Word “flesh” the sense of “man,” or “human.” Crosby, then, should logically deny, though he does not deny, that Christ's body was derived from the Virgin.
We object to this view that: