The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 282

IX.

The Image

of •'

God

As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly."

One more

Man.

in

—

i

Cor. xv. 49.

point remains to be discussed,

viz.,

whether the

divine image refers to the image of Christ.

This singular opinion has found many warm defenders in the Church from the beginning. It originated with Origen, who with his brilliant, fascinating, and seducing heresies has unsettled many things in the Church and his heresy in this respect has found many defenders both East and West. Even Tertullian and Ambrose supported it, as well as Basil and Chrysostom and it took no less a person than Augustine to uproot it. Our Reformed theologians, closely following Augustine, have Junius, Zanchius and Calvin, Voetius and strongly opposed it. ;

;

Coccejus condemned it as error. We can safely say that in our Reformed inheritance this error never had a place. But in the last century it has crept again into the Church. The pantheistic philosophy occasioned it; and its after-effects have tempted our German and Dutch mediation theologians to return to this ancient error.

The

great philosophers

who

enthralled the minds of

men

at the

beginning of this century fell in love with the idea that God became man. They taught not that the Word became flesh, but God became man and that in the fatal sense that God is ever becoming, ;

and that He becomes a better and a purer God as He becomes more purely man. This pernicious system, which subverts the foundations of the Christian faith, and under a Christian form annihilates essential Christianity, has led to the doctrine that in Christ Jesus

had become a fact and from God would have become man even if man had

this incarnation

We have often spoken

;

of the

it

was deduced

that

not sinned.

danger of teaching

this doctrine.

i

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