The Fundamentals - 1910: Vol.6

The God-Man 83 non sequitur to affirm that Jesus is not God because He was a man. The point to be demonstrated is that He was not both. There are two classes of Scriptures relating to our Lord: the first, affirming His possession of a human nature, with all its innocent frailties and limitations; the second, ascribing to Him a divine nature, possessed of the attributes of Godhood, performing divine works, and worthy of supreme honor and worship. Unitarians can only fairly explain one of these classes of Scriptures, the former; but Trinitarians can accept both classes, and expound them in their integrity and fullness. We are not stumbled by evidences that Jesus was “bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh.” We rejoice in Him as in one “touched with a feeling of our infirmities;” but we have no need to refine away, by a subtle and unfair criticism, the ascription to His person of divine perfections and works. We gladly recognize the learning and the talents of many of the prominent Unitarian divines. We know that by the side of some of them we are but babes in intellect and attain- ment. But we remember that there was a time when “Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Matt. 11:25). The times demand of us a vigorous re-assertion of the old truths, which are the very foundations of the Gospel system. Humanity needs a Christ whom all can worship and adore. The mythical account of Strauss’ “Leben Jesu” ; the unreal and romantic Christ of Renan’s “Vie de Jesus” ; and even the merely human Christ of “Ecce Homo,” can never work any deliverance in the earth. Such a Messiah does not meet the yearnings of fallen human nature. It does not answer the pressing query, “How shall man be just with God?” It sup- plies no effective or sufficient agency for the regeneration of man’s moral powers. It does not bring God down to us in our nature. Such a Christ we may criticise and admire, as we would Socrates, or Plato, or Milton, or Shakespeare; but

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