become real, and in historical Christianity as in the truth.' Whereas in all extra-Christian religions the ideal and historic remain apart, in the founder of Christianity, according to the faith of Christendom, idea and reality are in absolute union. But the idea of the God-man is cognizable as one destined to realization, not merely possible but ethically necessary, because the person of the God-man is not like other members of humanity, which are unintelligible taken by themselves, but is destined to be the living centre of humanity.

1. The meaning of the text is, that neither the form nor the content of Revelation (§§ 52-61) attains its perfection and the goal which revelation cannot but propose to itself, until it has passed into Incarnation. On God's side, the purpose of His love from the beginning is perfect self-communication; but this is Incarnation. Let us consider this with respect to the form and contents of revelation. No doubt inspiration is a far higher form of revelation than revelation through impersonal nature-light, sound, etc. For whereas Nature is impersonal, an inspired man is a far more adequate organ of revelation, both as regards receptiveness for it, and the work of guarding and cultivating it. But still the divine communication is imperfect even in Inspiration. For even if it is not momentary in duration, as in the O. T., still an external relation to each other of the divine and the human is inherent in inspiration, because in the life of every inspired man there was a period when he was not such, a period which cannot be without after-consequences. For this reason, the completing of revelation (and of humanity) cannot fall within the sphere of Inspiration merely. The most perfect organ of revelation can only be the man who, from the first moment of his existence, in his entire person lives in a sphere of being pertaining to revelation and never separated from God. But in the circumstance of his entire person being made an organ of revelation is given at once in inseparable unity external as well as internal revelation and the completion of both. For now the divine life itself enters into a human life. It assumes a shape that embodies and manifests the divine life in human form, and is therefore divine-human. In the God-man the inner spiritual miracle is so united with the outer world

1 Jolin i. 17.

reality, that the union of the divine and human life, implied in the idea of inspiration without measure,1 forms a man who in the midst of the world is a personal miracle, the God-man who, possessed of absolute worth in himself, fully answers to the communicating will of divine love, and is withal destined both in himself to give perfect expression to human nature, and outside himself to consummate human nature.

The same result is arrived at by considering the contents which revelation is intended to communicate to humanity. These consist not merely in divine powers, as in inspiration, but in the entire fulness of the Godhead, which is to be communicated to humanity. Nay, God Himself wills to live and dwell in the absolute organ of divine revelation. In harmony with His own form of being, belonging to Him as λóyos or the Principle of revelation, He wills to possess existence and self-consciousness in man, forming with him one unity of life, willing even in the world to live His triune life. Since it is God's will in His eternal love to make an absolute communication of Himself as regards His entire communicable being, in the world-idea or world-counsel He willed not merely the spiritual existence of relative receptiveness for Him, but as Revealer or Móyos He wills absolutely such cosmical existence as is endowed with perfect receptiveness for Him and His presence, i.e. He wills the perfect divine image in the form of realization in the world, which again is the Son of His love.2 In Him as Móyos the Godhead as regards its absolute, intensively spiritual being gains real existence in the world; and the man in whom this is carried out, is not merely His dwelling-place or vestment, but Himself the embodied expression of God's eternal image in time. In His love He so makes this man His own that He regards him as pertaining to HimselfHimself, the living potency of revelation.

2. EXAMINATION OF THE CHIEF OBJECTIONS.-The Incarnation, we said, has its verification in God's ethical Essence. But the question arises: Even if God, in accordance with this Essence of His, can will the Incarnation without contradiction, is the human race really receptive for a union and dignity so high and wonderful? Is there room within its idea for a form of this divine-human character? Let us first examine the objec

1 John iii. 34.

2 Cf. 2 Cor. iv. 4, 6; Col. i. 13

tions, and then pass to the positive exposition. A priori, indeed, there would be no possibility of a divine-human personality within the limits of our race, supposing human development were inconceivable apart from sin. But how can the ethical element-that power above Omnipotenceas respects the realization that it craves, be at the mercy of its absolute opposite-evil? More plausible is the allegation that the infinite cannot be comprehended by the finite. But if this means that it is utterly incomprehensible, it proves too much; for in this case there would be no real participation whatever in the divine, the infinite, neither in an ethical nor intellectual sense-not even in religious feeling. For even participation in this sense, because receptiveness for the infinite, implies a corresponding receptiveness. Certainly God cannot communicate His self-existence. That would be to abolish the distinction between God and man; but this is not required by the idea of divine Incarnation.-But were it alleged that at least humanity is not receptive for the totality or entire fulness of the Godhead, but only for a part, it is to be considered that God must not be contemplated as a Quantum, an infinitely extended, extensively infinite quantity. Else certainly there were no room, so to speak, for God in the narrow limits of humanity. On the contrary, we have recognised as the innermost Essence or heart of God His intensive infinity (§§ 27-32), His love, upon which everything physical in God must be regarded as dependent. But that intensive infinity, God's love and wisdom, finds room even in a human heart destined to partake in the divine likeness.—It is finally objected: "Were God to become absolute man in one, nothing would be left for others. Were the divine fulness to exhaust itself in one, originating cause would be wanting for others, who could only represent a minus of the Moreover, an absolute God-man would be withdrawn from the race of human beings, and lack homoousia with us. It is therefore rather to be held that God is eternally becoming man, while perfect in none.' Here the idea of Godmanhood is not meant to be denied altogether; but absolute or perfect Godmanhood is said to be impossible. But after it is conceded that God wills to become man, and live His life in the 1 Baur, Geschichte der Menschwerdung Gottes, III. p. 994 ff.

same.

"1

world, it were a contradiction to the divine idea of the Godmanhood for God never to attain what He wills, but only to be ever seeking Himself in the world, to be ever occupied in fruitless attempts, without finding Himself. Further, in this objection we have to find fault with the conception of God as an extensive quantity, a divisible Quantum, in which case certainly, supposing God to communicate Himself perfectly to one, nothing would be left for the rest. The fear, that an absolute God-man might not leave room for other men participating in God, or that the homoousia might be lost, must vanish of itself, provided His unique character be so blended with His true relationship to the human race, that the very thing raising Him above the rest, and apparently separating Him from them, proves the bond of union and relationship with them, and provided the perfection given in Him, by which they are supposed to be stripped of intrinsic worth, is the very thing by which alone they themselves are able to attain their distinctive worth. But both conditions are secured, when the communication of the Godhead to humanity in Him is the perfect satisfaction of the craving for God and receptiveness for God in human nature, and when His uniqueness and dignity, turned towards them in love, proves the necessary basis and living principle of their consummation, in which in Him they participate.

3. With the possibility of Incarnation on God's part, moreover, the idea of humanity cannot be incompatible, because the form of this idea is not to be determined arbitrarily, nor by the results of daily experience, but, man being a progressive creature, by the idea or destination of humanity. But its God-imaging destination is to be defined by the idea of God, or by what God has in view as its goal. We must therefore maintain, that the absolute God-man finds room in the idea of

1 The merely physical, i.e. unethical conception of God, appears without disguise, when Baur, ut supra, p. 997, supposes: "If the idea once attains its absolute form of existence in a definite, particular individual, it is deprived of the impulse to realize itself in other individuals." And the conception of God as a Quantum is evident from the fact, that in case the idea is realized in one individual, he denies to it the possibility of realizing itself in other individuals. Even Origen is in advance of this view, when he says: It is not with spiritual as with external things; no one loses in wisdom, etc., by others partaking therein.

DORNER-CHRIST. DOCT. II.

In

humanity, nay is part of its perfection, first because only through Him can the perfect Church of God become realized, and again because even the personal consummation of each particular individual is conditioned by Him. For the verification of these propositions we cannot here go back to the fact of sin, because in the preliminary Part of Dogmatics merely their possibility, not their necessity, is before us. But if for this reason we must here forego proving the necessity of the God-man in order to redemption, we need not forego the idea of consummation, and what results therefrom. Humanity, although not created perfect at first, is created for the purpose of being perfected, not for the purpose of remaining a torso. the divine world-idea the perfective will, because fixing the ultimate aim, is even antecedent in a logical respect to the redemptive will conditioned only by the Fall. On this account the preliminary Part of our science has primarily to occupy itself with the former, in which also the principle of redemption from sin will find its verification. The goal, which logically must be placed first in the divine thought, governs the way to the goal. Now it pertains to the economy of the consummation of humanity, that it be not a mere aggregate of spiritual atoms without coherence and unity, whether perfect or imperfect, neutral or opposing, but a selfenclosed whole. Humanity is to represent the house of the living God, His most glorious work, upon which He pours all the beams of His glory. This Church of God must be a perfect, spiritual, and absolutely-realized organism, existing and conscious of itself as perfect unity. But this true humanity can only have the consciousness of perfect unity through a central person likewise real and actually existent in the world, not through the Xóyos remaining in an ideal state or operative internally. We saw above (§ 49), that in order to the formation of all higher religious communities unity of founder is necessary, the common spirit of the body finding in him its visible point of departure. How much more does that community, which is to embrace for ever humanity on its way to perfection, and whose common spirit is to be identical with that of true humanity, need an objective central personage cognisable by all, union with whom will be the pledge to all of union with each other! But this central