of the Incarnation; but, however that may be, he was not the man to go counter to what he knew to be the prevailing mode of speech, or even apprehended might become such. After having maintained, then, that Christ is the only Son of God, and that He is both God and man, Augustine proceeds:

"Now here the grace of God is displayed with the greatest power and clearness. For what merit had the human nature in the man Christ earned, that it should in this unparalleled way be taken up into the unity of the person of the only Son of God? What goodness of will, what goodness of desire and intention, what good works had gone before, which made this man worthy to become one person with God? Had he been a man previously to this and had He earned this unprecedented reward, that He should be thought worthy to become God? Assuredly nay: from the very moment that He began to be man, He was nothing else than the Son of God, the only Son of God, the Word who was made flesh, and therefore He was God; so that just as each individual man unites in one person a body and a rational soul, so Christ in one person unites

the Word and man. Now wherefore was this unheard-of glory conferred on human nature, a glory which, as there was no antecedent merit, was of course wholly of grace except that here those who looked at the matter soberly and honestly might behold a clear manifestation of the power of God's grace, and might understand that they are justified from their sins by the same grace, which made the man Christ Jesus free from the possibility of sin ?" 1

Augustine's doctrine of the Incarnation, which had represented an important tendency of the Latin Church, soon after came to be regarded in the Eastern Church, and especially from the point of view of Cyril of Alexandria, as the rankest heresy. No words, however bitter or scurrilous, were deemed too strong for its condemnation, when it was reproduced, in substance, by

Cf. also "ConThe exposition here, but it may

1 "Enchir.," c. 36, also c. 40, cited ante, p. 73. fess.," vii, 19, and "De Correp. et Grat.," c. 30. of the attitude of Augustine cannot be attempted be said that it involves the question whether the personality of an individual man is capable of growth and expansion under the influence of the Holy Spirit till it includes the universal range of human experience, and so becomes the equivalent of humanity in itself and as a whole. The point is discussed in Slattery's "The Master of the World," pp. 275 ff., and by Briggs, North Am. Rev., June, 1906.

the Antiochian school in the East. But the opposite view, the doctrine of the incomplete humanity, the denial of individuality to the human nature of Christ, cannot be said to have gained the sanction of General Councils. Certainly the Council of Chalcedon did not teach it, nor does anything in its acts necessarily warrant the inference that Christ was "man," and not "a man," or that individuality did not of necessity inhere in His human nature. The decision of Chalcedon was that in Christ there were two natures and one person. Beyond that the council did not go. But others did go beyond this statement, reading into it what it did not originally contain. For the Council of Chalcedon, in which the influence of the Western Church was strong, had rendered a decision not acceptable to the Church as a whole in the East. It had also, while adopting the Western view of the Incarnation, neutralized it to some extent in approving the term "Mother of God" (EOTÓKOS) as the designation of Mary.

It therefore became necessary in the East to work over the decision of Chalcedon, in order to bring it into harmony with the prevailing popular theology. This was done first by Leontius of Byzantium (c. 485-543 A.D.). What Newman undertook to do for the Articles of the

Anglican Church, in the nineteenth century, Leontius accomplished in the sixth century for the decrees of Chalcedon, giving them a sense which reversed their original purport, and by means of which he accommodated himself to their statements. "He was the first definitely to maintain that the human nature of Christ has its personality in the Logos."1 "A devout disciple of Apollinaris," says Harnack, "might properly have said, in reference to the phrase of Leontius, 'the personality of the human nature is in the Logos’ (inorrnpai ẻ Tây Xóy), that Apollinaris said about the same thing, but said it in plainer words.” 2

From this time, and in consequence of this view of the Person of Christ, no further interest

1 Cf. Harnack, "Dogmengesch.," ii, 383 ff., Eng. tr., v. 232 ff. Also Loofs, "Leitfaden," 175, 185.

2 See ante, p. 131. The consequence of the doctrine of the impersonality of the human nature "sanctioned by no Ecumenical Council"

a doctrine, says Dorner,

is this, "Instead of our

seeing God in Christ, who is also the veritable Son of man, full of grace and truth, the humanity of Christ must, logically, be lowered to the position of a mere selfless opyavov of God, or even to that of a mere temple or garment.' It was a further consequence, that the Church "made such a use of the doctrine of the impersonality of the human nature, that the tendency toward the magical view of the operations of grace and toward transubstantiation, which was characteristic of the Middle Ages, found ever increased satisfaction." Dorner, "Person of Christ," vol. iii, pp. 116, 119.

was felt in the study of the life of Christ, nor any effort made to get deeper insight into His consciousness, or His teaching. "The Exposition of the Orthodox Faith," by John of Damascus (754-787), is an illustration of the mechanical method of dealing with the life of Jesus, after separating Him from humanity and nullifying His human nature, no matter how strongly in mere formulas that humanity may be asserted. Nor is there any hope for the Orthodox Church of the East so long as the Damascene remains its most authoritative theologian. Since Christ, as the Damascene affirms, "is not an individual," and since the Incarnation was complete from the moment of His conception, actual growth in "wisdom" or "in favor with God and man cannot be predicated without qualification. "He receives no addition to these attributes," but rather manifests, as the occasion demands, the wisdom already possessed, adapting it to the moment as the years increase, and simulating these for human growth ("Expos.," 32). The Gospel narrative tells us that He feared, and these are His own words, "Now is my soul troubled." John admits the fear was real, and not apparent, but "now means just when He willed" to be troubled ("Expos.," 23). He prayed, but not because He felt any "need of