The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 371

NOT A DIVINE-HUMAN NATURE

331

man, and a divine-human nature in the Mediator. So that if man had not fallen, the Mediator would nevertheless have appeared in a divine-human nature. This is a truly abhorrent doctrine. It puts in the place of the Savior from our sins another and entirely different person; the contrasts between the Creator and the creature disappear, the divine-human nature of the Christ is actually placed above the divine nature itself. For the Mediator in the divine-human nature possesses something that is lacking in the divine nature, viz., its reconciliation with the human. This shows how much further the Ethicals have departed from the pure confession of the Lord Jesus Christ than is generally believed. According to them there is in the Person of the Mediator a kind of new nature, a kind of third nature, a kind of higher nature, which is called "human-divine." And the union with Christ is found (not subjectively, but objectively) in the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ pours into us that new, third, higher kind, viz., the divine-human nature. Hence the regenerate are the persons who have received This has no connection this new, third, higher kind of nature. with sin, but would have appeared even in the absence of sin. The reconciliation of sinners is something additional, and does not touch the root of the matter.

The

real and principal thing is, that the Mediator between the and the infinite" (to use the very words of Professor Gunning) imparts unto us, who have the lower, human nature, this new, "finite

third, higher, divine-human nature.

Not that the human nature

human nature

take its place.

ical theologians,

the

is to

be removed and the divine-

No, indeed but, according to the Eth;

human nature

is originally

tined to be thus ennobled, refined, and exalted.

intended and des-

As

the slip of a

under the influence of the sun, develops and produces by and by choice flowers, so does the human nature develop and unfold itself under the influence of the Sun of Righteousness into this plant,

higher nature.

That

must be accomplished by means of regeneration is on If there had been no fall in Paradise, and no sin after the fall, there would have been no regeneration, and our nature's lower degree would have passed over spontaneously into that this

account 0/

sin.

higher, divine-human nature. icals.

And this is,

in the circles of the

Eth-

the basis of that much-lauded unio mystica with the Christ.

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