# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1859_S172
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

172 On the Teaching of the Newest Theology concerning the Person of Christ, etc.

Just as truly as the last particular — obedience unto death on the cross —
is said of the human nature in Christ, just as certainly do all the other
statements coordinated with it hold likewise of that same nature.
Accordingly it is already, from this one chief passage alone, irrefutably
certain that Christ humbled himself according to the human nature he had
assumed, and not according to the Godhead — although, on account of the
personal union of the two natures, the humiliation belongs to and is proper
to the Godhead in Christ as well, yet only in this sense: that the humanity
was, as it were, the organ through which the Person subsisting in both
natures carried out the humiliation. And it carried this out in that the
divine nature withdrew its power from cooperation to such a degree, and
left the human nature so far to itself, as each successive stage of the
humiliation it willed required. Concerning the character of the human
nature which Christ assumed into the unity of his Person, that false
teaching says that it was already, in and of itself, subject to the
consequences of sin, to death, and to weakness — indeed, subject even to
the abstract possibility of sinning, even though this possibility could
"impossibly" ever have become actual. Here, of course, everyone will at
once ask, with Brömel: "Can you really conceive of a Christ who himself
possessed a nature fallen under the power of death and in need of
redemption, and who nevertheless redeemed others? Who, then, first
redeemed him from his nature in need of redemption?" Scripture says,
Hebrews 7:26ff.: "Such a high priest we ought to have, one who is holy,
innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the
heavens," etc. The "high priest" is the God-man, the whole Person:
therefore he must also, according to his human nature, have been holy,
innocent, undefiled, etc. — that is, in no way subject to the consequences
of sin. Likewise the angel also says to Mary: "That holy thing which is
born of you shall be called the Son of God." It is also impossible that the
Son of God should have assumed the human nature otherwise than in a
state of perfect holiness. For had it, in itself, been afflicted with the
consequences and effects of sin, with curse and death, then the eternal Son
of God would, together with the human nature, have taken curse and
death up into the unity of his Person — heaven would have been wedded
in him to hell. A ghastly alliance, of which Scripture knows nothing; a
horrible dualism which runs through even all the phraseology of modern
theology that tries to gather everything into the unity of a single concept.
And this is what a Thomasius chooses, what so many other representatives
of believing theology prefer to choose, rather than take their reason captive
under the simple teaching of Holy Scripture concerning the Person of
Christ and his humiliation, as it is set forth in the Lutheran confession. We,
for our part, would rather — instead of adopting this new perversion —
remain with the pure, Christ-honoring, comfort-giving teaching of Holy
Scripture and of the Christian Church, which Martin Chemnitz expresses
in these words: "The Son of God has assumed the true, unimpaired, or
whole