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TOPIC: Post-Nicene Fathers Vol 09 (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 29.01.07 Introduction Part 7
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Thus the Son made possible the union of humanity with Himself. He 'shrank from God into manhyperlink ' by an act not only of Divine power, but of personal Divine will. He Who did this thing could not cease to be what He had been before; hence His very deed in submitting Himself to the change is evidence of His unchanged continuity of existencehyperlink .
And furthermore, His assumption of the servant's form was not accomplished by a single act. His wearing of that form was one continuous act of voluntary self-repressionhyperlink , ancl the events of His life on earth bear frequent witness to His possession of the powers of God.
Thus in Him God is united with man; these two natures form the 'elements' or 'parts' of one Personhyperlink . The Godhead is superposed upon the manhood; or, as Hilary prefers to say, the manhood is assumed by Christhyperlink . And these two natures are not confusedhyperlink , but simultaneously coexist in Him as the Son of Manhyperlink . There are not two Christshyperlink , or is the one Christ a composite Being in such a sense that He is intermediate in kind between God and Man. He can speak as God and can also speak as Man; in the Homilies on the Psalms Hilary constantly distinguishes between His utterances in the one and the other nature. Yet He is one Person with two natures, of which the one dominates, though it does not extinguish, the other in every relation of His existence as the Son of Manhyperlink . Every act, bodily or mental, done by Him is done by both natures of the one Christ. Hence a certain indifference towards the human aspects of His life, and a tendency rather to explain away what seems humiliation than to draw out its lessonshyperlink . And Hilary is so impressed with the unity of Christ that the humanity, a notion for which he has no namehyperlink , would have been in his eyes nothing more than a collective term for certain attributes of One Who is more than man, just as the body of Christ is not for him a dwelling occupied, or an instrument used, by God, but an inseparable property of Christ, Who personally is God and Man.
Hence the body of Christ has a character peculiar to itself. It is a heavenly bodyhyperlink , because of its origin and because of its Owner, the Son of Man Who came down from heaven, and though on earth was in heaven stillhyperlink . It performs the functions and experiences, the limitations of a human body, and this is evidence that it is in every sense a true, not an alien or fictitious body. Though it is free from the sins of humanity, it has our weaknesses. But here the distinction must be made, which will presently be discussed, between the two kinds of suffering, that which feels and that which only endures. Christ was not conscious of suffering from these weaknesses, which could inflict no sense of want of weariness or pain upon His body, a body not the less real because it was perfect. He took our infirmities as truly as He bore our sins. But He was no more under the dominion of the one than of the otherhyperlink . His body was in the likeness of ours, but its reality did not consist in the likenesshyperlink , but in the fact that He had created it a true body. Christ, by virtue of His creative power, might have made for Himself a true body, by means of which to fulfil God's purposes, that should have been free from these infirmities. It was for our sake that He did not. There would have been a true body, but it would have been difficult for us to believe it. Hence He assumed one which had for habits what are necessities to us, in order to demonstrate to us its re realityhyperlink . It was foreordained that He should be incarnate; the mode of the Incarnation was determined by considerations of our advantage. The arguments by which this thesis is supported will be stated presently, in connection with Hilary's account of the Passion. It would be difficult to decide whether he has constructed his theory concerning the human activities of our Lord upon the basis of this preponderance of the Divine nature in His incarnate personality, or whether he has argued back from what he deems the true account of Christ's mode of life on earth, and invented the hypothesis inexplanation of it. In any case he has had the courage exactly to reverse the general belief of Christendom regarding the powers normally used by Christ. We are accustomed to think that with rare exceptions, such as the Transfiguration, He lived a life limited by the ordinary conditions of humanity, to draw lessons for ourselves from His bearing in circumstances like our own, to estimate His condescension and suffering, in kind if not in degree, by our own consciousness. Hilary regards the normal state of the incarnate Christ as that of exaltation, from which He stooped on rare occasions, by a special act of will, to self-humiliation. Thus the Incarnation, though itself a declension from the pristine glory, does not account for the facts of Christ's life; they must be explained by further isolated and temporary declensions. And since the Incarnation is the one great event, knowledge and faith concerning which are essential, the events which accompany or result from it tend, in Hilary's thought, to shrink in importance. They can and must be minimised, explained away, regarded as 'dispensations,' if they seem to derogate from the Majesty of Him Who was incarnate.
When we examine the interpretation of Scripture by which Hilary reaches the desired conclusions we find it, in many instances, strange indeed. The letter of the Gospels tells us of bodily needs and of suffering; Christ, though more than man, is proved to be Man by His obvious submission to the conditions of human life. But according to Hilary all human suffering is due to the union of an imperfect soul with an imperfect body. The soul of Christ, though truly human, was perfect; His body was that of a Person Divine as well as human. Thus both elements were perfect of their kind, and therefore as free from infirmityhyperlink as from sin, for affliction is the lot of man not because he is man, but because he is a sinner. In contrast with the squalor of sinful humanity, glory surrounded Christ from the Annunciation onward throughout His course on earthhyperlink . Miracle is the attestation of His Godhead, and He who was thus superior to the powers of nature could not be subject to the sufferings which nature inflicts. But, being omnipotent, He could subject Himself to humiliations which no power less than His own could lay upon Him, and this self-subjection is the supreme evidence of His might as well of His goodwill towards men. God, and only God, could occupy at once the cradle and the throne on highhyperlink . Thus in emphasizing the humiliation Hilary is extolling the majesty of Christ, and refuting the errors of Arianism. That school had made the most of Christ's sufferings, holding them as proof of His inferiority to the Father. In Hilary's eyes His power to condescend and His final victory are equally conclusive evidences of His co-equal Divinity. But if He stoops to our estate, and is at the same time God exercising His full prerogatives, here again there must be a 'dispensation.' He was truly subject to the limitations of our nature; that is a fact of revelation. But He was subject by a succession of detached acts of self-restraint, culminating in the act, voluntary like the others, of His deathhyperlink . of His acceptance of the ordinary infirmities of humanity we have already spoken. Hilary gives the same explanation of the Passion as he does of the thirst or weariness of Christ. That He could suffer, and that to the utmost, is proved by the fact that He did suffer; yet was He, or could He be, conscious of suffering? For the fulfilment of the Divine purpose, for our assurance of the reality of His work, the acts had to be done; but it was sufficient that they should be done by a dispensation, in other words, that the events should be real and yet the feelings be absent of which, had the events happened to US, we should have been conscious. To understand this we must recur to Hilary's theory of the relation of the soul to the body. The former is the organ of sense, the latter alifeless thing. But the soul may fall below, or rise above, its normal state. Mortification of the body may set in, or drugs be administered which shall render the soul incapable of feeling the keenest painhyperlink . On the other hand it is capable of a spiritual elevation which shall make it unconscious of bodily needs or sufferings, as when Moses and Elijah fasted, or the three Jewish youths walked amid the flameshyperlink . On this high level Christ always dwelt. Others might rise for a moment above themselves; He, not although, but because He was true and perfect Man, never fell below it. He placed Himself in circumstances where shame and wounds and death were inflicted upon Him; He had lived a life of humiliation, not only real, in that it involved a certain separation from God, but also apparent. But as in this latter respect we may no more overlook His glory than we may suppose Him ignorant, as by Et dispensation He professed to behyperlink , so in regard to the Passion we must not imagine that He was inferior to His saints in being conscious, as they were not, of sufferinghyperlink . So far, indeed, is He from the sense of suffering that Hilary even says that the Passion was a delight to Himhyperlink , and this not merely in its prospective results, but in the consciousness of power which He enjoyed in passing through it. Nor could this be surprising to one who looked with Hilary's eyes upon the humanity of Christ. He enforces his view sometimes with rhetoric, as when he repudiates the notion that the Bread of Life could hunger, and He who gives the living water, thirsthyperlink , that the hand which restored the servant's ear could itself feel painhyperlink , that He Who said, 'Now is the Son of Man glorified,' when Judas left the chamber, could at that moment be feeling sorrowhyperlink , and He before Whom the soldiers fell be capable of fearhyperlink , or shrink from the pain of a death which was itself an exertion of His own free will and powerhyperlink . Or else he dwells upon the general character of Christ's manhood. He recognises no change in the mode of being after the Resurrection; the passing through closed doors, the sudden disappearance at Emmaus are typical of the normal properties of His body, which could heal the sick by a touch, and could walk upon the waveshyperlink . It is a body upon the sensibility of which the forces of nature can make no impression whatever; they can no more pain Him than the stroke of a weapon can affect air or waterhyperlink ; or, as Hilary puts it elsewhere, fear and death, which have so painful a meaning to us, were no more to Him than a shower falling Upon a surface which it cannot penetratehyperlink . It is not the passages of the Gospel which tell of Christ's glory, but those which speak of weakness or suffering that need to be explained; and Hilary on occasion is not afraid to explain them away. For instance, we read that when our Lord had fasted forty days and forty nights 'He was afterward an hungred.' Hilary denies that there is a connection of cause and effect. Christ's perfect body was unaffected by abstinence; but after the fast by an exertion of His will He experienced hungerhyperlink . So also the Agony in the Garden is ingeniously misinterpreted. He took with Him the three Apostles, and then began to be sorrowful. He was not sorrowful till He had taken them, they, not He, were the cause. When He said, 'My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,' the last words must not be regarded as meaning that His was a mortal sorrow, but as giving a note of time. The sorrow of which He spoke was not for Himself but for His Apostles, whose flight He foresaw, and He was asserting that this sorrow would last till He died. And when He prayed that the cup might pass away from Him, this was no entreaty that He might be spared. It was His purpose to drink it. The prayer was for His disciples that the cup might pass on from Him to them; that they might suffer for Him as martyrs full of hope, without pain or fearhyperlink . One passage, St. Luke xxii. 43, 44, which conflicts with his view is rejected by Hilary on textual grounds, and not without some reasonhyperlink . He had looked for it, and found it absent, in a large number of manuscripts, both Greek and Latin. But perhaps the strangest argument which he employs is that when the Gospel tells Us that Christ thirsted and hungered and wept, it does not proceed to say that He ate and drank and felt griefhyperlink . Hunger and thirst, eating and drinking, were two sets of dispensations, unconnected by the relation of cause and effect; the tears were another dispensation, not the expression of personal grief. If, as a habit, He accepts the needs and functions of our body, this does not render His own body more real, for by the act of its creation it was made truly human; His purpose, as has been said, is to enable us to recognise its reality, which would otherwise be difficulthyperlink . If He wept, He had the same object; this use of one of the evidences of bodily emotion would help us to believehyperlink . And so it is throughout Christ's life on earth. He suffered but He did not feel. No one but a heretic, says Hilary, would suppose that He was pained by the nails which fixed Him to the Crosshyperlink .
It is obvious that Hilary's theory offers a perfect defence against the two dangers of the day, Arianism and Apollinarianism. The tables are turned upon the former by emphatic insistence upon the power manifested in the humiliation and suffering of Christ. That He, being what He was, should be able to place Himself in such circumstances was the most impressive evidence of His Divinity. And if His humanity was endowed with Divine properties, much more must His Divinity rise above that inferiority to which the Arians consigned it. Apollinarianism is conttoverted by the demonstration of His true humanity. No language can be too strong to describe its glories; but the true wonder is not that Christ, as God, has such attributes, but that He Who has them is very Man. The theory was well adapted for service in the controversies of the day; for us, however we may admire the courage and ingenuity it displays, it can be no more than a curiosity of doctrinal history. Yet, whatever its defects as an explanation of the facts, the skill with which dangers on either hand are avoided, the manifest anxiety to be loyal to established doctrine, deserve recognition and respect. It has been said that Hilary ' constantly withdraws in the second clause what he has asserted in the firsthyperlink ,' and in a sense it is true. For many of his statements might make him seem the advocate of an extreme doctrine of Kenosis, which would represent our Lord's self-emptying as complete. But often expressed and always present in Hilary's thought, for the coherence of which it is necessary, is the correlative notion of the dispensation, whereby Christ seemed for our sake to be less than He truly was. Again, Hilary has been accused of 'sailing somewhat close to the cliffs of Docetismhyperlink ,' but all admit that he has escaped shipwreck. Various accounts of his teaching, all of which agree in acquitting him of this error, have been given; and that which has been accepted in this paper, of Christ by the very perfection of His humanity habitually living in such an ecstasy as that of Polycarp or Perpetua at their martyrdom, is a noble conception in itself and consistent with the Creeds, though it cannot satisfy us. In part, at any rate, it belonged to the lessons which Hilary had learned from Alexandria. Clement had taught, though his successor Origen rejected, the impassability of Christ, Who had eaten and drunk only by a 'dispensation ';-' He ate not for the sake of His body, which was sustained by a holypower, but that that false notion might not creep into the minds of His companions which in later days some have, in fact, conceived, that He had been manifested only in appearance. He was altogether impassible; there entered from without into Him no movement of the feelings, whether pleasure , or painhyperlink .' Thus Hilary had what would be in his eyes high authority for his opinion. But he must have felt some doubts of its value if he compared the strange exegesis and forced logic by which it was supported with that frank acceptance of the obvious sense of Scripture in which he takes so reasonable a pride in His direct controversy with the Arians. And another criticism may be ventured. In that controversy he balances with scrupulous reverence mystery against mystery, never forgetting that he is dealing with infinities. In this case the one is made to overwhelm the other; the infinite glory excludes the infinite sorrow from his view. Here, if anywhere, Hilary needs, and may justly claim, the indulgence he has demanded. It had not been his wish to define or explain; he was content with the plain words of Scripture and the simplest of creeds. But he was compelled by the fault of others to commit a faulthyperlink ; and speculation based on sound principles, however perilous to him who made the first attempt, had been rendered by the prevalence of heresy a necessary evil. Again, we must bear in mind that Hilary was essentially a Greek theologian, to whom the supremely interesting as well as the supremely important doctrine was that God became Man. He does not conceal or undervalue the fact of the Atonement and of the Passion as the means by which it was wrought. But, even though he had not held his peculiar theory of impassibility, he would still have thought the effort most worth making not that of realising the pains of Christ by our experience of suffering and sense of the enormity of sin, but that of apprehending the mystery of the Incarnation. For that act of condescension was greater, not only in scale but in kind, than any, humiliation to which Christ, already Man, submitted Himself in His human state.
Christ, Whose properties as incarnate are thus described by Hilary, is one Person. This, of course, needs no proof, but something must be said of the use which he makes of the doctrine. It is by Christ's own work, by an act of power, even of violencehyperlink , exercised by Him upon Himself, that the two natures are inseparably associated in Him; so inseparably that between His death and resurrection His Divinity was simultaneously present vith each of the severed elements of His humanityhyperlink . Hence, though Hilary frequently discriminates between Christ's utterances as God and as Manhyperlink , he never fails to keep his reader's attention fixed upon the unity of His Person. And this unity is the more obvious because, as has been said, the Manhood in Christ is dominated by the Godhead. Though we are not allowed to forget that He is truly Man, yet as a rule Hilary prefers to speak in such words as, 'the only-begotten Son of God was crucifiedhyperlink ,' or to say more briefly, ' God was crucifiedhyperlink Judas is 'the betrayer of Godhyperlink ;' ' the life of mortals is renewed through the death of immortal Godhyperlink .' Such expressions are far more frequent than the balanced language, 'the Passion of Jesus Christ, our God and Lordhyperlink , and these again than such an exaltation of the manhood as 'the Man Jesus Christ, The Lord of Majestyhyperlink ., But once, in an unguarded moment, an element of His humanity seems to be deified. Hilary never says that Christ's body is God, but he speaks of the spectators of the Crucifixion 'contemplating the power of the soul which by signs and deeds had proved itself Godhyperlink .'
But though distinctions may be drawn, and though for the sake of emphasis and brevityChrist may be called by the name of one only of His two natures, the essential fact is never forgotten that He is God and man, one Person in two forms, God's and the servant's. And these two natures do not stand isolated and apart, merely contained within the limits of one personality. Just as we saw that Hilary recognises a complete mutual indwelling and interpenetration of Father and Son, so he teaches that in the narrower sphere of the Incarnation there is an equally exact and comprehensive union of the Godhead and Manhood in Christ. Jesus is Christ, and Christ is Jesushyperlink . Not merely is the one Christ perfect Man and perfect God, but the whole Son of Man is the whole Son of Godhyperlink . So far is His manhood from being merged and lost in His Divinity, that the extent of the one is the measure of the other. We must not imagine that, simultaneously with the incarnate, there existed a non-incarnate Christ, respectively submitting to humiliation and ruling the worlds; nor yet must we conceive of one Christ in two unconnected states of being, as though the assumption of humanity were merely a function analogous to the guiding of the stars. On tbe contrary, the one Person is co-extensive with all infinity, and all action lies within His scope. Whatever He does, whether it be, or be not, in relation to humanity, and in the former case whether it be the exaltation of man" hood or the self-emptying of Godhead, is done 'within the sphere of the Incarnationhyperlink , the sphere which embraces His whole being and His whole action. The self-emptying itself was not a self-determination, instant and complete, made before the Incarnation, but, as we saw, a ptocess which continued throughout Christ's life on earth and was active to the end. For as He hung, deliberately self-emptied of His glory, on the Cross, He manifested His normal powers by the earthquake shock. His submission to death was the last of a consistent series of exertions of His will, which began with the Annunciation and culminated in the Crucifixion.it heretical; but the whole tenour of the commentary proves that this was simply carelessness in the Homolies on the Psalms he also writes somewhat loosely on occasion,: e.g. Iiii. 4 fin.,where he mentions Christ's forner nature, i e. the Divinity, and Ib. 5, where he speaks of 'Him Who after being God (ex Deo) had died as man.' But only malevolence could give an evil interpretation to these passages, delivered as they were for the edification of Hilary's flock, and with no thought of theological accuracy. It is, indeed, quite possible that they were never revised, or even intended, for publication by him.
Hilary estimates the cost of the Incarnation not by any episodes of Christ's life on earth, but by the fact that it brought about a real, though partial, separation or breachhyperlink within the Godhead. Henceforward there was in Christ the nature of the creature as well as that of the Creator; and this second nature, though it had been assumed in its most perfect form, was sundered by an infinite distance from God the Father, though indissolubly united with the Divinity of his Son. A barrier therefore was raised between them, to be overcome in due time by the elevation of manhood in and through the Son. When this elevation was complete within the Person of Christ, then the separation between Him and His Father would be at an end. He would still have true humanity, but this humanity would be raised to the level of association with the Father. In Hilary's doctrine the submission of Christ to this isolation is the central fact of Christianity, the supreme evidence of His love for men. Not only did it thus isolate Him, truly though partially, from the Father, but it introduced a strain, a ' division'hyperlink within His now incarnate Person. The union of natures was real, but in order that it might become perfect the two needed to be adjusted; and the humiliation involved in this adjustment is a great part of the sacrificemade by Christ. There was conflict, in a certain sense, within Himself, repression and concealment of His powers. But finally the barrier was to be removed, the loss regained, by the exaltation of the manhood into harmonious association with the Godhead of Father and of Sonhyperlink . Then He Who had become in one Person God and Man would become for ever fully God and fully Man. The humanity would gain, the Divinity regain, its appropriate dignityhyperlink , while each retained the reality it had had on earth.
Thus Christ's life in the world was a period of transition. He had descended; this was the time of preparation for an equal, and even loftier, ascent. We must now consider in what the preparation consisted; and here, at first sight, Hilary has involved himself in a grave difficulty. For it is manifest that his theory of Christ's life as one fired without effort, spiritual or physical, or rather as a life whose exertion consisted in a steady self accommodation to the infirmities of men, varied by occasional and special acts of condescension to suffering, excludes the possibility of an advance, a growth in grace as well as in stature, such as Athanasius scripturally taughthyperlink . We might say of Hilary, as has been said of another Father, 'under his treatment the Divine history seems to be dissolved into a docetic dramahyperlink ., In such a life it might seem that there was not merely no possibility of progress, but even an absence of identity, in the sense of continuity. The phenomena of Christ's life, tberefore, are not manifestations of the disturbance and strain on which Hilary insists, for they are, when, rightly considered, proofs of His union with God and of His Divine power, not of weakness or of partial separation. It would, indeed, be vain for us to seek for sensible evidence of the ptocess of adjustment, for it went on within the inmost being of the one Person. It did not affect the Godhead or the Manhood, both visibly revealed as aspects of the Person, but the hidden relation between the two. Our knowledge assures us that the process took place, but it is a knowledge attained by inference from what He was before and after the state of transition, not by observation of His action ill that state. Both natures of the one Person were affected; 'everything'- glory as well as humiliation-'was common to the entire Person at every moment, though to each aspect in its own distinctive manner.' The entire Person entered into inequality with Himself; the actuality of each aspect, during the state of humiliation, fell short of its idea- of the idea of the Son, of the idea of the perfect man, of the idea of the God-man. It was not merely the human aspect that was at first inadequate to the Divine; for, through the medium of the voluntary 'evacuatio,' it dragged down the Divine nature also, so far as I permitted it, to its own inequalityhyperlink .' Such is the only explanation which will reconcile Hilary's various, and sometirnes obscure, utterances on this great subject. It is open to the obvious and fatal objection that it cuts, instead of loosening, the knot. For it denies any connection between the dispensation of (:Christ's life on earth and the mystery of His assumption and exaltation of humanity; the one becomes somewhat purposeless, and the other remains unverified. But it is at least a bold and reverent speculation, not inconsistent with the Faith as a system of thought, though no place can be found for it in the Faith, regarded as a revelation of fact.
It was on behalf of mankind that this great sacrifice was made by the Son. While it separated Him from the Father, it united Him to men. We must now consider what was the spiritual constitution of the humanity which He assumed, as we have already considered the physical Man, as we saw (p. Ixix.) is constituted of body and soul, an outward and an inward substance, the one earthly, the other heavenlyhyperlink . The exact ptocess of his creation has beenrevealed. First, man-that is, his soul-was made in the image of God; next, long afterwards, his body was fashioned out of dust; finally by a distinct act, man was made a living soul by the breath of God, the heavenly and earthly natures being thus coupled togetherhyperlink . The world was already complete when God created the highest, the most beautiful of His works after His own image. His other works were made by an instantaneous command; even the firmament was established by his handhyperlink ; man alone was made by the hands of God;-'Thy hands have made me and fashioned me.' This singular honour of being made by a process, not an act, and by the hands, not the hand or the voice, of God, was paid to man not simply as the highest of the creatures, but as the one for whose sake the rest of the universe was called into beinghyperlink . It is, of course, the soul, made after the image of God, which has this high honour; an honour which no length of sinful ancestry can forfeit, for each soul is still separately created. Hence no human soul is akin to any other human soul; the uniformity of type is secured by each being made in the same pattern, and the dignity of humanity by the fact that this pattern is that of the Son, the Image of God. But the soul pervades the whole body with which it is associated, even as God pervades the universehyperlink . The soul of each man is individual, special to himself; his brotherhood with mankind belongs to him through his body, which has therefore something of universality. Hence the relation of mankind with Christ is not through his human soul; it was 'the nature of universal flesh' which He tookhyperlink that has made Him one with us in the Incarnation and in the Eucharisthyperlink . The reality of His body, as we have seen, is amply secured by Hilary; its universality is assured by the absence of any individual human paternity, which would have isolated Him from othershyperlink . Thus He took all humanity into His one body; He is the Churchhyperlink , for He contains her through the mystery of His body. In Him, by the same means, 'there is contained the congregation, so to speak, of the whole race of men.' Hence He spoke of Himself as the City set on a hill; the inhabitants are mankindhyperlink . But Christ not only embraces all humanity in Himself, but the archetype after Whom, and the final cause for Whom, man was made. Every soul, when it proceeds from the hands of God, is pure, free and immortal, with a natural affinity and capacity for goodhyperlink , which can find its satisfaction only in Christ, the ideal Man. But if Christ is thus everything to man, humanity has also, in the foreordained purpose of God. something to confer upon Christ. The temporary humiliation of the Incarnation has for its result a higher glory than He possessed beforehyperlink , acquired through the harmony of the two natures.
The course of this elevation is represented by Hilary as a succession of births, in continuation of the majestic series. First there bad been the eternal generation of the Son; then His creation for the ways and for the works of God, His appointment, which Hilary regards as equivalent in importance to another birth, to the office of Creator; next the Incarnation, the birth in time which makes Him what He was not before, namely Manhyperlink , efukefumeful~ , It is difficult to see whatHilary's thought was; perhaps he had not defined it to himself. But, with this reading in his copy of the Gospel, it was necessary that he should be ready with an explanation; and though there remained a higher perfection to be reached, this birth in Baptism might well be regarded as a stage in the return of Christ to His glory, an elevation of His humanity to a more perfect congruity with His Godhead. This birth is followed by another, the effect and importance of which is more obvious, that of the Resurrection, 'the birthday of His humanity to gloryhyperlink .' By the Incarnation He had lost unity with the Father; but the created nature, by the assumption of which He had disturbed the unity both within Himself and in relation to the Father, is now raised to the level on which that unity is again possible. In the Resurrection, tberefore, it is restored; and this stage of Christ's achievement is regarded as a New birthhyperlink , by which His glory becomes, as it had been before, the same as that of the Father. But now the glory is shared by His humanity; the servant's form is promoted. to the glory of Godhyperlink and the discordance comes to an end. Christ, God and Man, stands where the Word before the Incarnation stood. In this Resurrection, the only step. in, this Divine work which is caused by sin, His full humanity partakes. In order to satisfy all' the conditions of actual human life, He died and visited the lower worldhyperlink ; and also, as man shall do, He rose again with the same body in which He had diedhyperlink . Then comes that final state, of which something has already been said, when God shall be all' in all. No further change will be possible within the Person of Christ, for his humanity, already in harmony with the Godbead, will now be transmuted. The whole Christ, Man as well as God, will become wholly God. Yet the humanity will still exist, for it is inseparable from the Divinity, and will consist, as before, of body and soul But there will be nothing earthly or fleshly left in the body; its nature will be purely spiritualhyperlink . T'he only form in which Hilary can express this result is the seeming paradox that Christ will, by virtue of the final subjection, 'be and continue what He is nothyperlink By this return of the whole Christ into perfect union with God, humanity attains the purpose of its creation. He was the archetype after Whose likeness man was fashioned, and in His Person all the possibilities of mankind are attained. And this great consummation not only fulfils the destinies of humanity; it brings also an augmentation of the glory of Him Who is glorified in Christhyperlink .
Footnotes
245 Trin. xii. 6, decedere ex Deo in hominem. Perhaps it should be decidere, as in Tr. in Ps. Ixviii. 4.
246 Tr. in Ps. Ixviii. 25.
247 Trin. xi. 48, `emptying Himself
0' might have been a single act; `hiding Himself within Himself
0'was a sustained course of conduct.
248 Genus is fairly common, though much rarer than natura; pars occurs in Trin. xi. 14, 15, and cf. ib'. 40. Elementa is, I think, somewhat more frequent.
249 Trin. xi. 40. Natura assumpti corporis nostri natura paterna divintatis invecta. Conversly, Trin. ix, 54, nova natura in Deum illata. But such expressions are rare; hominem ad sumpsit is the normal phrase. In Tr. in Ps. Ixviii 4, he speaks as if the two natures had been forced to coalesce by a Power higher than either. But, as we have seen. in this part of the Homily Hilary's language is destitute of theological exactness.
250 Tr. in Ps. liv. 2.
251 E.g. Trin. ix. Il, 39 x. 16. The expression utriusque,natura persona in Trin. ix. 14 is susceptible of another interpretation.
252 E.g. Trin. x. 22.
253 Trin. x. 22, quia totus hominis filius totus Dei filius sit.
254 Cf. Gore's Dissertation's, p. 138 f. But, Hilary, though he shares and even exaggerates the general tendency of his time, has also a strong sense of the danger of Apollinarianism
255 Homo assumptus is constantly used, and similarly homo noster for our manhood, e.g. Trin. ix. 7. This often leads to an awkwardness of which Hilary must hae been fully conscious, though he regarded it as a less evil than the use of an abstract term.
256 Corpus carleste, x. 18.
257 Tr. in Ps. ii. 11, from St. John iii. 13.
258 Trin. x. 47 f.; Tr. in Ps. cxxxviii. 3.
259 Trin. x. 25.
260 Trin. x. 24. The purpose of the Old Testament Theophanies, it will be remembered, was the same. God appeared as man, In order to make men familiar with the future reality and so more ready to believe. See Trin. V. 17.
261 Trin. x. 14, 15.
262 Trin. ii. 26 f., iii. 18f. and often, especially in the Comm. in Matt.
263 E.g. Trin. ix. 4, xi. 48.
264 Ib, x. 11, 61.
265 Trin. x. 14.
266 Comm. in Matt. iii. 2; Trin. x. 45;. The freedom of Christian martyrs from pain is frequently noticed in early writers.
267 Cf. p. lxvi.
268 Hilary was undoubtedly influenced more than he knew by the Latin words, pati and dolere, the one purely objective, the other subjective. By a line of thought which recalls that of Mozley concerning Miracles he refuses to argue from our experience to that of Christ. That He suffered, in the sense of having wounds, and death inflicted upon Him, is a fact; that He was conscious of suffering is an inference, a supposition (putatur dolere quia patitur, Tr. in Ps. cxxxviii. 3, fallitur ergo humaneastimationis opinio putans hunc dolere quod patitur, Trin. x.47, and one which we are not entitled to make. In fact, the passage last citied states that He has no natura dolendi; so also x, 23, 35, and cf. Tr. in Ps liii. 12. Or as Hilary puts it, Trin. x. 24, He is subject to the nature passionum not to their iniurie.
269 Tr. in Ps. cxxxviii. 26.
270 Trin. x. 24.
271 Ib. 28.
272 Ib. 29.
273 Ib. 27.
274 Ib. 11.
275 Ib. 23. These instances of His power are used as a direct proof of Christ's incapacity of pain. Hilary is willing to confess that He could feel it, if it be shewn that we can follow Him in these respects.
276 loc. cit.
277 Tr.in Ps. Iiv. 6.
278 Comm. in Matt. iii. 2,
279 Ib, xxxi. I-7. These were not immature speculations, abandoned by a riper judgment. The explanation of `even unto death
0' is repeated, and that concerning the cup implied, in Trin. x. 36, 37
280 Trin. x. 41. Westcott and Hort insert it within brackets. Even if the passage be retained, Hilary has an explanation which agrees with his theory.
281 Ib. 24
282 loc. cit., Tr. in Ps. liii. 7
283 In Tr. in Ps. liii. 7, there is also the moral purpose. He prays humbly. His prayer expresses no need of His own, but is meant to teach us the lesson of meekness.
284 Trin. x. 45. Yet Hilary himself is not always consistent. In the purely homiletical writing of Tr. in Ps. lxviii. 1, he dwells upon Christ's endurance of pain. His argument obliged Him to emphasize the suffering; it was natural, though not logical, that he should sometimes insist also upon the feeling.
285 Harnack, Dogmengesch. ii. 30I n.
286 The words are Forster's, op. cit. p. 662, and are accepted as representing their opinion by Bardenhewer, Patrologie, p. 382, and Blaltzer, Christologie, p. 32.
287 Strom. vi. ,f 71. Bigg, Christian Platonists, p. 71, gives other sources, by which Hilary is less likely to have been influenced, from which he may have derived this teaching. This is not the only coincidence between him and Clement.
288 Trin ii. 2, in vitium vitio coarctamur alieno.
289 Tr. in Ps. Ixviii. 4. The unity is also strongly put in Trin. viii. 13 x. 6I.
290 Trin. x. 34. This was Hilary's deliberate belief. But in earlier life he had written rashly of the Holy Spirit (i.e. God the Son) surrendering His humanity to be tempted, and Of the cry upon the Cross `testifying the departure of God the Word from Him
0' (Comm. in Matt.iii, xxxiii. 6). This, if it had represented Hilary's teaching in that treatise would have proved it heretical ; but the whole tenour of the commentary proves that this was simply carelessness. In the Homilies on the Psalms he also writes somewhat loosely on occasion; e.g. liii. 4 fin., where he mentions Christ's former nature, i.e. the Divinity, and ib. 5, where he speaks of `Him Who after being God (ex Deo) had died as man.
0' But only malevolence could give an evil interpretation to these passages, delivered as they were for the edification of Hilary's flock, and with no thought of theological accuracy. It is, indeed, quite possible that they were never revised, or even intended, for publication by him.
291 E.g. Trin. ix. 6, and often in the Homilies on the Psalms, as cxxxviii. 13.
292 Tr. in Ps. Iiii. 12.
293 loc. cit
294 Tr. in Ps. cxxxix. 15.
295 Trin. x. 63. Similarly in Tr. in Ps. Ixvii. 2l, he speaks of `the passion, the cross, the death, the burial of God.
0'
296 Trin Ps.liii.4.
297 Trin. ix. 3.
298 Tr. in Ps. cxli. 4. There is no evidence that the text is corrupt, though the words as they stand are rank Appololinarianism and the more significant as dating from the maturity of Hilary's thought. But here, as often, we must remember that the Homilies are familiar addresses.
299 Trin. x. 52. We must remember not only that heretical distinctions had been made, but that Christ is the name of the Son in pretemporal relation to the world (see p. Ixvii.), as well as in the world.
300 Ib. 22, 52.
301 Cf. Gore, Dissertations, p. 211. It is in relation to the self emptying that Hilary uses such definite language : Trin. xi. 48, intra suam ipse vacuefactus potestatem.... Se ipsum intra se vacnefaciens Continuit; xii. 6, se evacuavit in sese.
302 Offensio, Trin. ix. 38.
303 Trin. ix 22, A se dividuus
304 E.g Trin. ix. 38.
305 Trin. ix. 6, 0n earth Christ is Deus and homo; in glory He is totus Deus and totus homo.
306 E.g. Discourses against the Arians, iii. 53, p.422 of the translation in this series.
307 Bp. Westcott on Cyril of Alexandria in St. John's Gospel (Speaker's Commentary), p. xcv.
308 Dorner, I. ii. 415. The liberty has been taken of putting `Himself
0' for `itself
0' On the same page Dorner speaks of `ever increasing return of the Logos into equality with Himself.
0' This is a contradiction of his own explanation. God has become God-man. He could not again become simply the Logos. The key to Hilary's position is the double nature of Christ. The Godhead and the Manhood are aspects in revelation, abstractions in argument. That which connects them and gives them reality is the one Person, the object of thought and faith.
309 Tr. in Ps. cxviii., Iod, 6, cxxix. 5.
310 Ib. cxxix. 5.
311 Isai. xlv. 12, the Old Latin, translated from the LXX., having the singular. This characteristic piece of exegesis is in Tr. in Ps. cxviii., Iod, 5; cf. ib. 7, 8.
312 Ib. Iod, I..
313 Tr. in Ps. cxviii., Koph, 8.
314 Ib. Ii. 16. naturam in se universa carnis adsumpsit, ib. Iiv. 9, universitatis nostrae caro' est factus ; so also Trin. xi. 16 in., and often.
315 This latter is the argument of Trin. viii. 73f.
316 Trin ii. 24; in Him there is the universi generis humani corpus because He is homo factus ex virgine.
317 Tr. in Ps. cxxv. 6.
318 Comm. in Matt. iv. 12 ; habitatio, as is often the case in late Latin with abstracts, is collective. Hilary also speaks of Christ as gerens nos, Trin x. 25, which recalls the gestans of Tertullian and the portans of Cyprian.
319 Tr. in Ps ii. 16, Ivii. 3, Ixii. 3, and often.
320 Trin. xi. 40-42.
321 Tr. in Ps. ii. 27.
324 Dorner, 1. ii. 417. Dorner overlooks the birth in Baptism.
325 Tr. in Ps. ii. 27, 1iii. 14
326 Ib. cxxxviii. I9.
327 Ib. liii. 14.
328 lb. Iv. 12.
329 Trin. xi. 40, 49.
330 Ib. 40. habens in sacramento subiectionis esse ac manere cuod non est.
331 Trin. xi. 42, incrementum glorificati in eo Dei