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revelation of Himself, as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. His explanation of the fall and restoration of man, translated into the simplest language it will bear, may be stated thus. The Creator is properly one with His creation, for He contains in Himself the primordial ideas or archetypes on which it is formed; man, His chief work, is the middle point of creation, combining in himself the opposite poles of creaturely existence, the sensible and the intellectual.* He fell, not in time and in the earthly paradise, but in himself, and before the temptation of the Devil, for it is incredible that had he ever stood in contemplation of eternal peace, he should have fallen at all.† By this fall he not only lost his original union with God, but suffered an internal division in himself into male and female, which was healed by the resurrection of Christ, who rose, not in bodily sex but simply as man, for in Him is neither male nor female. Man retained, however, in his fall the mind, in which chiefly consists the image of the Creator, and by which we understand Him, and did not wholly desert the Author of his existence, for in Him we live and move and have our being.§ But there was need of reconciliation. Therefore the Word of God took upon Him human nature, and in doing so took upon Him the nature of every created substance, visible or invisible, that He might save and restore all

* Ib. ii. p. 48.

+ Ib. iv. p. 196. Datur intelligi quod homo prius in se ipso lapsus est quam a diabolo tentareter, non enim credibile est eundem hominem et in contemplatione æternæ pacis stetisse, et suadente femina, serpentis veneno corrupta corruisse.

Ib. ii. p. 49, cf. p. 52. Adunatis totius creaturæ quæ in primo homine fieret si non peccaret, in Christo resurgente ante omnes per omnia facta. Non enim in sexu corporco sed in homine tantum surrexit ex mortuis, in ipso enim nec masculus nec femina erat.

§ Ib. ii. p. 48, v. p. 230.

by saving and reuniting after an ineffable manner the outward products to their original causes or archetypes, which existed eternally and immutably in His own divine nature; and thus, by His incarnation, He gives to men redemption, and to angels knowledge of Himself, for before the incarnation or theophany He was incomprehensible to all created natures alike. The restoration of man is fulfilled in His death, for the dissolution of the body is the end of our destruction, and is rather a benefit than a penalty, though it be the penalty of sin, and is not to be regarded as the perishing of our substance, but as a wonderful and ineffable return into the former state which man had lost by sin, that state of pure contemplation in which nothing remains but what is spiritual and intellectual, for the substance of the body is itself intellectual.*

The Platonic element in this scheme is obvious enough. We have the idea and the paurópeva. The Word of God is incarnated in visible form to reunite the ideal with the actual, the One with the many, the figures traced on the wall of the earthly cave with the eternal archetypes whose reflection they are, but from which they have been unnaturally divorced by sin. The Incarnation and Resurrection are dwelt upon almost to the exclusion of the Passion, and the death of the corruptible body is felt to be not so much a punishment as a release, the rending asunder of the material veil interposed between the spirit of man and the spirit of God. Erigena's theory exhibits forcibly the abnormal division between man and his Maker, wrought by sin, and the need of One who shares the

* Ib. v. p. 252, 232.

natures of both to become the Repairer of the breach. But it is not equally easy to connect all its details with the doctrines of the Gospel. He has rather galvanized than revived the Alexandrian theology in this last attempt to harmonize faith with reason through the forms of Neo-Platonism, and in his own day he found few to understand or appreciate him. For two centuries yet the trance of theological science remains unbroken; but sleepers dream before their awakening.

67

NOTE TO CHAP. III.

ON STRAUSS' ESTIMATE OF THE BELIEF OF THE
EARLY CHURCH.

In a section on the 'Christology of the Orthodox System,' at the conclusion of his original work on the Life of Jesus (Das Leben Jesu. Tübingen, 1837), Strauss, after insisting that the outlines of that system are to be found in the New Testament, and have their roots in the conviction of Christ's resurrection, had taken occasion to describe, with that cloquence which is always at his command when he chooses to employ it, the belief of the early Church in her Lord. He stood, like Balaam, to gaze on the armies of Israel, and his tongue was constrained to bless the faith which he has made it the labour of a lifetime to uproot. My object in referring to the statement here is to observe, that it substantially endorses the view of patristic theology taken in this volume. And since there is a lesson to be learnt from the utterances of Saul among the prophets,' and the book is not familiar to the majority of English readers, it may be worth while to translate the passage here, premising that some of its native force must inevitably evaporate in the process.

"How full of blessing and elevation, of encouragement and comfort, were the thoughts the early Church derived from this conception of her Christ! Through the sending of the Son of God into the world, and His delivery to death for it, heaven and earth are reconciled (2 Cor. v. 18, sqq., Ephes. i. 10, Col. i. 20); through His supreme oblation the love of God is guaranteed to men (Rom. v. 8, viii. 31, sqq., 1 John iv. 9), and the most joyful hope opened to them. Since the Son of God has become Man, men are His brethren, and, as such, children of God, and joint heirs with Christ of the

treasure of Divine beatitude. (Rom. viii. 16-29.) Their slavish estate under the law has ceased, and love has come into the place of the fear of punishment threatened by the law. (Rom. viii. 15, Gal. iv. 1, sqq.) Believers are redeemed from the curse of the law, inasmuch as Christ has given Himself up for them, by enduring that death on which the curse of the law was laid. (Gal. iii. 13.) Now we have no longer the impossible task of fulfilling all the requirements of the law (Gal. iii. 10, sqq.)-a task none have accomplished (Rom. i. 18, iii. 20), and, owing to the sinfulness of nature, none can (Rom. v. 12, sqq.); which only entangles more deeply those who attempt it in the misery of an internal conflict with themselves. (Rom. vii. 7, sqq.) He who believes in Christ, and trusts to the atoning power of His death, is pardoned by God; he who surrenders himself to God's free grace is justified before Him by grace, not through any works or performances of his own, whence all selfrighteousness is excluded. (Rom. iii. 31, sqq.) And, since the Mosaic law can no longer bind the believer who has died to it with Christ (Rom. vii. 1), since His eternal and all-sufficient Sacrifice has superseded the Jewish sacrifices and priesthood, the wall of partition which divided Jew from Gentile is broken down. The Gentiles, estranged from the old theocracy, left 'without God and without hope in the world,' are called to share in the new covenant of God, and a free approach provided for them to their heavenly Father. Thus the two great divisions of mankind, once at enmity with each other, are now at peace, members of the body of Christ, which is the spiritual edifice of His Church. (Eph. iii. 11, sqq.) But that justifying faith in the death of Christ is in very deed a dying with Him-a death, that is, unto sin; and as He rose from death to a new and immortal life, so shall they that believe on Him rise from the death of sin to a new life of righteousness and holiness; they shall put off the old man and put on the new. (Rom. vi. 1, sqq.) Christ Himself stands by to aid them with His Spirit, who fills those He inspires with spiritual might, and frees them more and more continually from the bondage of sin. (Romans viii. 1.) Nay, more; those in whom that Spirit dwells will be quickened in body as well as soul; for when the course of this world is ended, God through Christ will raise their bodies as He has raised the body of Christ. (Rom. viii. 11.) Christ, whom the bonds of death and Hades could not hold (Acts ii. 24), has conquered both for us, and released believers from fear of those chicfest powers of mortality. (Rom. viii.

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