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only in virtue of its union with the divine Logos, who is in His very nature adorabilis. We must
distinguish between the object and the ground of this adoration. The object of our religious
worship is the God-man Jesus Christ, but the ground on which we adore Him lies in the person
of the Logos.
D. THE UNIPERSONALITY OF CHRIST A MYSTERY.
The union of the two natures in one person is a mystery which we cannot grasp, and which for
that very reason is often denied. It has sometimes been compared with the union of body and
soul in man; and there are some points of similarity. In man there are two substances, matter
and spirit, most closely united and yet not mixed; so also in the Mediator. In man the principle
of unity, the person, does not have its seat in the body but in the soul; in the Mediator, not in
the human, but in the divine nature. As the influence of the soul on the body and of the body
on the soul is a mystery, so also the connection of the two natures in Christ and their mutual
influence on each other. Everything that happens in the body and in the soul is ascribed to the
person; so all that takes place in the two natures of Christ is predicated of the person.
Sometimes a man is denominated according to his spiritual element, when something is
predicated of him that applies more particularly to the body, and vice versa. Similarly things
that apply only to the human nature of Christ are ascribed to Him when He is named after His
divine nature, and vice versa. As it is an honor for the body to be united with the soul, so it is an
honor for the human nature of Christ to be united with the person of the Logos. Of course, the
comparison is defective. It does not illustrate the union of the divine and the human, of the
infinite and the finite. It does not even illustrate the unity of two spiritual natures in a single
person. In the case of man the body is material and the soul is spiritual. It is a wonderful union,
but not as wonderful as the union of the two natures in Christ.
E. THE LUTHERAN DOCTRINE OF THE COMMUNICATION OF ATTRIBUTES.
1. STATEMENT OF THE LUTHERAN POSITION.
The Lutherans differ from the Reformed in their
doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum. They teach that the attributes of one nature are
ascribed to the other on the basis of an actual transference, and feel that it is only by such a
transference that the real unity of the person can be secured. This position does not involve a
denial of the fact that the attributes of both natures can be ascribed to the person, but adds
something to that in the interest, as they see it, of the unity of the person. They did not always
state their doctrine in the same form. Luther and some of the early Lutherans occasionally
spoke of a communication in both directions, from the divine nature to the human, and also
from the human to the divine. In the subsequent development of the doctrine, however, the
communication from the human nature to the divine soon receded from sight, and only that
from the divine to the human nature was stressed. A still greater limitation soon followed.