140 Some Implications of the Incarnation [CH. 



true and a false idea. The true idea is, that if Christ 

 had emptied Himself of Godhead and become Man in 

 very fact, God must have been immanent in Him in 

 exactly the same sense that God is immanent in every 

 man who admits Him to fellowship as well as in the 

 world of inanimate matter. He indwells each part of 

 the cosmos, is limited by it, and through it is becoming 

 influenced by the changes of a finite experience. But, 

 since Christ was Perfect, God was not limited by Him 

 in any sense but that which is implicit in the durational 

 conditions of human existence upon earth; there was 

 no super-added limitation of sin. 



The false idea is that God was immanent in God. 

 Christ is eternally the divine Logos; but on earth He 

 laid His Eternal Divinity aside and became Man. His 

 own Godhead, and the Godhead of the Father and the 

 Spirit, were immanent in His Manhood. His Godhead 

 was not immanent in His Godhead, for that He had laid 

 aside ; put it off, emptied Himself of it ; in becoming man. 

 To believe otherwise would be to involve ourselves in 

 a maze of unthinkable absurdities. Godhead is perfect 

 and complete, and cannot be immanent in Itself. "The 

 Word became (not adopted the form of) Flesh (Very 

 Man) and dwelt among us, and we saw His Glory, the 

 Glory of the Only Begotten of the Father" but we 

 only saw His glory in retrospective vision, when He had 

 taken it again. "His own received Him not" at the 

 time of His manifestation. Even His disciples only 

 comprehended His Divine Being after His Resurrection. 

 Peter might call Him "the Christ, the Son of the Living 

 God," but we must remember what the term 'Christ,' 

 and more especially what the term 'Son of God,' meant 

 to the Jew. In Daniel it is used of an angel (and from 

 this prophet the similar term ' Son of Man ' is derived, 

 or at least shown to be a term general in apocalyptic 

 literature) ; we find analogous usages in Genesis vi. 2, Job 



