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The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

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to mind; but a dependent, soul-originated consciousness belongs to matter.<br />

<strong>The</strong>re is no transfer of properties; but there is a common participation in<br />

them. And so, in some sense, <strong>and</strong> yet with the infinite difference made by<br />

the nature of the subjects in this case, we reply to the sophism against the<br />

doctrine of our Church: <strong>The</strong> divine in Christ is forever divine; the human<br />

forever human; but as they can never be confounded, so can they never be<br />

separated; <strong>and</strong> the one person participates in both, <strong>and</strong> each has a personal<br />

communication with the attributes of the other. "Great is the MYSTERY of<br />

Godliness: GOD WAS MANIFEST IN THE FLESH.”<br />

<strong>The</strong> Reformed <strong>and</strong> Lutheran doctrines of the Person of Christ.<br />

In Dr. Gerhart's further development of the doctrine of the German<br />

Reformed Church, especially as related to that of the Lutheran Church, he<br />

goes on to say, in immediate connection with the words on which we have<br />

already dwelt: "<strong>The</strong> Reformed...thus emphasizing especially the difference<br />

of the two natures, though affirming them to be inseparably <strong>and</strong> eternally<br />

united in one person." <strong>The</strong> German Reformed Church certainly does not<br />

affirm more emphatically than the Lutheran that the two natures are<br />

different, although it may exaggerate the difference until it obscures the<br />

doctrine of the unity. But when Dr. Gerhart says that his Church affirms<br />

the two natures to "be inseparably <strong>and</strong> eternally united in the one person,"<br />

he strikes the very rock which is fatal to the logical consistency of the<br />

whole un-Lutheran view of this great subject. For at the Lord's Supper he<br />

admits that the divine nature of Christ is present. Now, either the human<br />

nature of Christ is united with the divine there, or it is not. If it be there<br />

united with it, it must be there present with it, for personal union implies<br />

not only presence, but the most intimate species of presence. If it be not<br />

united with it there, it is separated from it there, <strong>and</strong> consequently not<br />

inseparably united. Except in the locality in which the human nature of<br />

Christ is confined, on the Reformed theory, the human is separated from<br />

the divine <strong>and</strong> the divine from the human. So far then from the union, on<br />

this theory, being inseparable, there is but a solitary point at which the two<br />

natures are not separated. As is infinity to a

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