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Part Three: The Doctrine of the Person and the Work of Christ
The Person of Christ
I. The Doctrine of Christ in History
A. THE RELATION BETWEEN ANTHROPOLOGY AND CHRISTOLOGY.
THERE is a very close connection between the doctrine of man and the doctrine of Christ. The
former deals with man, created in the image of God and endowed with true knowledge,
righteousness and holiness, but through wilful transgression of the law of God despoiled of his
true humanity and transformed into a sinner. It points to man as a highly privileged creature of
God, still bearing some of the traces of his original glory, but yet as a creature that has lost its
birthright, its true freedom, and its original righteousness and holiness. This means that it
directs attention, not merely, nor even primarily, to the creatureliness, but to the sinfulness of
man. It emphasizes the ethical distance between God and man, the distance resulting from the
fall of man, which neither man nor angels can bridge; and is as such virtually a cry for divine
help. Christology is in part the answer to that cry. It acquaints us with the objective work of God
in Christ to bridge the chasm, and to remove the distance. It shows us God coming to man, to
remove the barriers between God and man by meeting the conditions of the law in Christ, and
to restore man to His blessed communion. Anthropology already directs attention to the
gracious provision of God for a covenant of friendship with man, which provides for a life of
blessed communion with God; but it is a covenant which is effective only in and through Christ.
And therefore the doctrine of Christ, as the Mediator of the covenant, must necessarily follow.
Christ, typified and predicted in the Old Testament as the Redeemer of man, came in the
fulness of time, to tabernacle among men and to effect an eternal reconciliation.
B. THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST BEFORE THE REFORMATION.
1. UP TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON.
In the early Christian literature Christ stands out as
both human and divine, the Son of Man, but also the Son of God. His sinless character is
maintained, and He is regarded as a proper object of worship. Naturally, the problem presented
by Christ, as at once God and man, and the difficulties involved in such a conception, were not
fully felt by the early Christian mind and only dawned on it in the light of controversy. It was but
natural that Judaism, with its strong emphasis on monotheism, should exercise considerable
influence on the early Christians of Jewish extraction. The Ebionites (or part of them) felt
constrained, in the interest of monotheism, to deny the deity of Christ. They regarded Him as a
mere man, the son of Joseph and Mary, who was qualified at His baptism to be the Messiah, by
the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him. There were others in the early Church whose doctrine
of Christ was constructed on similar lines. The Alogi, who rejected the writings of John, because