iv] Some Implications of the Incarnation \ 23 



man is really free and if God really experiences process ; 

 as He must, if there is to be an ultimate union founded 

 on a common experience. To this fact we have before 

 referred, both in the present book and, at more length, 

 in Evolution and Spiritual Life. 



If omnipotence and omniscience cannot be postulated 

 of the Godhead as limited by self-determined accept- 

 ance of the contingency of the cosmos He has created, 

 still less, surely, can it be imagined in the Godhead 

 Incarnate as a true human being. While clinging to our 

 belief in the Divinity of Christ without which the 

 Atonement dan have no meaning for us ; without which 

 we must be of all men most miserable, left still in our 

 sins: having a perfect Pattern, and no power to make 

 ourselves like Him we must cling equally to our belief 

 in His Manhood. If He was not true Man, as far as 

 human vision can see, we are no nearer to atonement 1 . 

 If He did not share our nature completely we cannot 

 enter into complete union with Him; we cannot pass 

 with Him through death into life eternal. The Atone- 

 ment depends equally upon His perfect Manhood and 

 His perfect Godhead. 



1 Cf. Mackintosh op. cit. passim, e.g. " A real Kenosis is a moral 

 as well as a theological necessity: the impulse from which it 

 sprang was moral ; it is the moral constitution of Godhead which 

 made it possible; moral forces sustained the self-reduced Life on 

 earth and gave it spiritual value," p. 472. 



" Every theory which accepts a real incarnation must deny that 

 the lowliness of our life is incongruous with Godhead," p. 474. 



" We cannot think of the Incarnate One as confining Himself 

 from moment to moment, by explicit volition, within the frontiers 

 of manhood. That would simply lead back to the old untenable 

 conception of a krypsis by which the divine self in Christ veils His 

 loftier attributes, now less, now more, and is actuated in each case 

 by didactic motives. To return thus to a theoretic duality of 

 mental life in Our Lord against which all modern Christology has 

 been a protest, is surely to sin against light," p. 482. 



