Doc. of Lord (Potts) n. 29

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29. III. THE LORD MADE DIVINE HIS HUMAN FROM THE DIVINE THAT WAS IN HIMSELF, AND THUS BECAME ONE WITH THE FATHER. The Doctrine of the Church that is received in the whole Christian world is that Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man, who, although He is God and Man, yet He is not two, but one Christ; one, by the taking of the manhood into God; one altogether, by unity of person; for as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ. These words are taken from the doctrine of the Athanasian Creed, which has been received in the whole Christian world; and they are what is essential in it concerning the unition of the Divine and the Human in the Lord. What is said further in that Creed about the Lord will be explained in its own chapter. From these words it is quite evident that it is in accordance with the faith of the Christian Church that the Divine and the Human in the Lord are not two, but one, as the soul and body are one man, and that the Divine in Him assumed the Human. [2] From this it follows that the Divine cannot be separated from the Human, nor the Human from the Divine, for this would be like separating the soul from the body. That this is so must be admitted by every one who reads what is cited above (n. 9, 21) from two of the evangelists (namely, Luke 1:26-35, and Matt. 1:18-25) concerning the Lord's birth; from which it is manifest that Jesus was conceived of Jehovah God, and born of the virgin Mary; so that the Divine was in Him, and was His soul. As therefore His soul was the very Divine of the Father, it follows that His body, or Human, must also have become Divine for where the one is Divine, the other must be so too. In this way and in no other are the Father and the Son one, and the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, and all things of the Son the Father's, and all things of the Father the Son's, as the Lord Himself teaches in His Word. [3] But how this unition was effected, shall be shown in the following order:

i. The Lord from eternity is Jehovah. ii. The Lord from eternity, or Jehovah, assumed the Human to save men. iii. He made Divine the Human from the Divine in Himself. iv. He made Divine the Human by means of temptations admitted into Himself. v. The full unition of the Divine and the Human in Him was effected by means of the passion of the cross, which was the last temptation. vi. By successive steps He put off the human taken from the mother, and put on a Human from the Divine within Him, which is the Divine Human, and is the Son of God. vii. That thus God became Man, as in first principles, so also in ultimates.


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