The Result of This System in Dividing That Ever Blessed Person
The evil effect of the spread of this teaching in the minds of saints is becoming very palpable. Mr. Anstey states, in his second letter to Continental brethren
We may distinguish Eternal Life and true Godhead in the person of the Son of God (see 1 John 1, 2), and we must separate them when we think and speak of what has been communicated to us.
The truth is that in rejecting, as you do, the distinction which he (Mr. R.) makes between “Eternal Life and Deity” in the Godhead, and in affirming (with this thought in your minds) a further point – that Eternal Life and Godhead, as to God’s gift to us cannot be separated, because that it is “Christ Himself and not a part of Him” that we receive (true as this is in its place) – you have fallen into the very same system of error, as is exposed above by J. N. D. You say that we must not “distinguish” (which you call “separate”) “Eternal Life” from “Godhead.” Hence if we have the one we must have the other” (pp. 1, 2).
Now this attempt to distinguish Eternal Life and true Godhead in the person of Christ, is without any foundation in Scripture and the passage Mr. Anstey refers to, viz., 1 John 1:22(For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) (1 John 1:2) teaches exactly the opposite. For what the Eternal Life was with the Father, was before manifestation in this world; and (unless we admit the false ideas which have been advanced involving a pre-existent humanity in His Person) was certainly Godhead; for there was nothing else existent there but Godhead being, life, and nature. This fact disposes of all these false and mystic notions at one blow. Pure Godhead alone existed in Christ before He came into the world, just as in the Father and in the Spirit, and no other; though the personality was distinct. Therefore the attempt to make out “something” distinct and different from Godhead, because that “something” is communicated to us, creates a false and mythical nature, which is supposed to be Eternal Life, but which has no existence at all, except in the mind of its author.
This is what J. B. S. and C. H. M. have now, by attaching their signatures, committed themselves to, as well as other teachers, and virtually all who have adopted these views. The relationship was divine, and the existence purely and exclusively divine, and from eternity; so that distinction of personality in the Godhead does not make any such nature of being as is described by Mr. Raven and his supporters.
This endeavor to “distinguish Eternal Life and true Godhead in the person of the Son,” is just what has led to the irreverent expressions which have been uttered concerning the Lord, and to the dividing of His glorious person. And what follows, that “we must separate them, when we think and speak of what has been communicated to us,” has the same tendency; for it cuts off and separates the eternal life which we enjoy, from its true divine source, and that which can alone sustain it in us. In ourselves we unquestionably must distinguish it from true Godhead; but to distinguish it in Him is to destroy both its nature and His Person. Faith knows and delights to recognize “both what is human and what is divine” in the blessed Person of Christ. But this distinguishing, now generally advocated by rationalistic writers, is most dangerous ground to get upon, and it is wholly false to say that the Gospels ever do this. On the contrary, as we have said they ever keep Him before us in the unity of His Person. No doubt they present, as has been stated, sometimes more of the divine and sometimes more of the human; and doubtless some acts are more characteristically divine in their nature and others more characteristically human. But even in specifically human acts, to attempt to draw the line, even as to these, or to exclude what is divine from them, and vice versa, is not permissible; and if reverence and faith and love for that blessed One are allowed to have their place, such an attempt will be at once checked. Take, for instance, the Lord touching the leper. No doubt it was with a human hand that He does so; but that blessed hand conveys divine virtue and power, and dispels the leprosy in a moment. And the words “I will, be thou clean,” expressive of divine title and authority, coming forth from human lips, and a heart filled with infinite love, accompany His touch, which in any other than His would have involved defilement. So when “the whole multitude sought to touch Him,” the Spirit of God adds, “for there went virtue out of Him and healed them all.”
Even in death (which is an act of a specific human character) we have seen that the divine purpose and nature (Heb. 10) not only gave all force and meaning to the assuming the body prepared for Him, but characterized the wondrous offering of that body on the cross; so that God could find His infinite pleasure and satisfaction in it. No man could take His life from Him. He had power to lay it down, and power to take it again. In a similar way we are not only told, that, whilst voluntarily submitting to it for our sakes, He could not be holden of death, for He was the Prince of Life; but He gives His flesh for the life of the world, and He that eateth of this bread shall live for ever. This life in Him overcomes all the power of death, and this is here extended distinctly to His humanity.
In this His divine title and exemption from death, save by His own act, as well as His resurrection power, appear. He adds, “Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again”; i.e., it was the voluntary nature of this act, and loving obedience to His Father in it, that constituted its value.
Thus, though we do not call divine acts human nor human acts divine, the Scripture shows us that, in His acts the human and divine combine or mingle. If this is denied His blessed Person is divided, and all the value of what He does, and is, is lost. This does not imply any confusion or transformation of the human into the divine, or the divine into the human; but it implies a union intimate and perfect, in His blessed Person, which will be our joy, as it is the ground of our confidence, throughout eternity. An union which is impenetrable and unfathomable, but because of which it could be said, when He was on earth, “The Son of man which is in heaven.”
For the help of the reader we quote a passage of Mr. Darby’s, in which he comments on Mr. B. W. Newton’s views, who in like manner was led by his false doctrine to divide the Person of the Lord. It will be seen that Mr. D. takes precisely the same ground as the writer has done in these pages, and wholly condemns the attempt to sever, either in thought, feeling, or action, the two natures, which coexist in the one and the same blessed Person of Christ.
Mr. N. goes beyond Scripture in saying that “to say that there was in His humanity a divine spring of thought and feeling is to deny His real humanity.”
Was His humanity then without a divine spring of thought and feeling? Had he said it was not of or from His humanity I should have nothing to say. But to say there was none in it unsettles the doctrine of Christ’s Person. There was the fullness of the Godhead bodily and the divine nature was a spring of many thoughts and feelings in Him. This is not the whole truth, but to deny it is not truth. If it merely means that humanity has not in itself a divine spring, that is plain enough, it would not be humanity. I am equally aware that it will be said that it was in His Person. But to separate wholly the humanity and divinity in springs of thought and feeling is dangerously overstepping Scripture. Is it meant that the love and holiness of the divine nature did not produce, was not a spring of, thought and feeling in His human soul? This would be to lower Christ below a Christian.
“His humanity,” it is said, “was not sui generis.”
This too is confusion. The abstract word humanity means humanity, and no more; and, being abstract must be taken absolutely, according to its own meaning. But if the writer means that in fact the state of Christ’s humanity was not sui generis, it is quite wrong, for it was united to Godhead, which no one else’s humanity ever was, which, as to fact, alters its whole condition. For instance, it was not only sinless but, in that condition, incapable of sinning; and to take it out of that condition is to take it out of Christ’s Person. What conclusion do I draw from all this?
That the wise soul will avoid the wretched attempt to settle, in such a manner, questions as to Him whom no one knoweth but the Father. The whole process of the reasoning is false (p. 229).
Now that Christ was truly man, in thought, feeling, and sympathy, is a truth of cardinal blessing and fundamental importance to our souls. But I have learnt thereby, not that humanity is not real humanity if there is a divine spring of thought and feeling in it, but that God can be the spring of thought and feeling in it without its ceasing to be truly and really man. This is the very truth of infinite and unspeakable blessedness that I have learnt. This, in its little feeble measure, and in another and derivative way, is true of us now by grace. He who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit. This is true in Jesus in a yet far more important and blessed way . . . What I see in Christ is man, where God has become the spring of thought and feeling. And, through this wonderful mystery, in the new creation in us all things are of God.
That, if we speak of His and our humanity, is what distinguishes it . . . Humanity is always simply humanity. The moment I call it His it is sui generis because it is His; and, in fact, humanity sustained by Godhead is not humanity in the same state as humanity unsustained by Godhead (Extracts from “Letter on Subjects Connected with the Lord’s Humanity” Collected Writings of J. N. D., vol. 15, pp. 228-230).
In a note Mr. Darby also says
Did He hereby cease to be man? Not at all. It is though according to God, in man, and as man, these thoughts and feelings are to be found. And this extends itself to all the sorrows and the pressure of death itself upon his soul, in thought. He had human feelings as to what lay upon Him, and before Him; but God was the spring of His estimate of it all. Besides, the manifestation of God was in His ways. We had known man innocent, in suitable circumstances; and guilty subject to misery; but in Christ we have perfectness in relation to God in every way, in infallibly maintained communion in the midst of all the circumstances of sorrow, temptation, and death, by which He was beset the spring of divine life in the midst of evil, so that His every thought, as man, was perfection before God, and perfect in that position. This was what marked His state, as being down here, this new thing (Collected Writings of J. N. D., vol. 15, p. 230).